Israel's Sabra upgrade on the Turkish M-60s...

Lunatik

Lunatik

Active member
Looks like a brand new tank and the turret/armor is said to be better thank the Merkava IV series in some ways. :m16shoot:

SabraMKIII.jpg
 
Definitely. And by looking at this photo people may think this tank has a hugely tall profile. It doesn't. It's actually shorter than the German Leopard 2A6. And it carries the sexy 120 mm Smoothbore cannon with an automatic electiric turret and totally-computerized targeting system. 8)

Indeed, the second nicest co-op project by Israel and Turkey after the F-4 2020 deal.
 
preetey much with all the ahrdware it got it is as good as most modern tanks outthere. new power treverse, modern armor, thermal sights, 120mm smooth bore...like a baby Mk 4...:)
 
ooooh, looks like tanks and kittens could make babies...

The picture isnt great by the way... Dark, bad angle etc... Can we have more pictures?
 
Here's a couple more from top/side angle.

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It is really cute indeed. But I can barely wait for the XK-2 based Turkish national MBT prototype to hit the defence summits. Maybe we'll see a few scaled models in IDEF '09. :smil:
 
And it's just pretty enough to send home a few pictures as post cards.
Not the M48 though... it's embarrasing no matter what you do to it.
 
Damn, they are really big boys... I always saw the M60 as a small tank...

But I was wrong... This thing is huuuge... I can hide plenty of kids inside... 50 or so...

Maybe because it have a high profile... The Abrams tank is much flatter... The Leclerc tank seems flat too compared to the M60...
 
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LeMask said:
Damn, they are really big boys... I always saw the M60 as a small tank...

But I was wrong... This thing is huuuge... I can hide plenty of kids inside... 50 or so...
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If you take out the engine, all the ammo, the seats, the steering system, all the computers...

The old tanks are always a bit big looking. I saw the K1 MBT at the war museum here and it looked suprisingly small.
 
Nice upgrade

This is good use of an old tank, but its not small.

Combat weight: 48,987 kg's (107,900 lb)
Merkava: 60,000kg's

Height: 3.27m
Leopard 2: 2.787m
 
Whoever is in charge of turkish purchases is a moron, improving junk to a point where it cant be modernized anymore and is still sub par to the latest generations of MBT, its somewhere around a strip down export version of LEO2A4 except you can still modernize Leos all the way to A6 whereas this junk has no future.
 
I guess in a perfect world with no budgetary issues your statement would make sense. And perhaps for the foreseeable future, Turkey only requires something of a Leo 2 A4 standard.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
I guess in a perfect world with no budgetary issues your statement would make sense. And perhaps for the foreseeable future, Turkey only requires something of a Leo 2 A4 standard.
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It would make sense if Turkey was poor or if it wasnt developing its own MBT, instead of tossing money out the window for a largely useless upgrade they could scrap or sell all their M60s and get funds for another 500 of their indigenous MBTs.
 
Actually Rorke may have a good point here. Sabra upgrade was heavily criticized by many Turkish defense analysts too, and I do see and understand their argument. But let's not forget that all of the countries who border Turkey to the east use very old Russian junk and Sabra is more than enough to slaughter what, say the Syrians, may throw its way. Turkey recently also purchased a lot of refurbished Leo 2A4s from Germany and has thousands of M60s with the Volkan upgrade (thermal sights, new FCS, computer, etc). All this is a stop-gap measure until the new Turkish Altay MBT (which will likely look very similar to the XK-2) rolls out.
 
It's what I mean. If that's the capability that'll you'll need for the foreseeable future, then just get that. You don't need to spend a fortune on something you don't need when that money can be better spent on other things.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
It's what I mean. If that's the capability that'll you'll need for the foreseeable future, then just get that. You don't need to spend a fortune on something you don't need when that money can be better spent on other things.
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Just because your immidietate neighbours have shitty armies doesnt mean you have to settle for a shitty one yourself.

Turkey had a choice, get updated but still not up to date tanks or get more of their very own shiny new MBTs, they blew it.
 
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