Greece ready to spend €2 billion to modernize its heavy tanks Leopard 1 and 2

11th May 2022

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Si the United States and some Europeans tend to soften their positions vis-à-vis Turkey, the Greek authorities and military, for their part, are far from sharing this hope regarding a possible change of method and objectives on the part of the Turkish President, R. T Erdogan, and a normalization of relations with Ankara. While Greece can count on solid growth of 8,1% in 2021 and more than 7% forecast in 2022, and its public finances are once again in the green, Athens can now focus on the modernization of its land forces, after having devoted significant efforts to modernizing its air forces with the acquisition of 24 aircraft Rafale and the modernization of 80 F-16s to the latest Block 70 standard, as well as its naval forces, with the acquisition of Type 214 submarines and FDI frigates.

For this, Athens will probably turn to its historic partner, the German Krauss Maffei Wegman, who has just sent a proposal considered very attractive by the Hellenic authorities. The German group is indeed proposing to carry the 183 Leopard 2A4 currently in service with the Greek armies to the A7 standard, and to modernize 190 of its Leopard 1 A5 for an amount of €1.3 billion, including the creation of a maintenance factory in the country. In addition, KMW offers Athens to equip the 183 Leopard 2A7 of the hard-kill Trophy active protection system from the Israeli Rafael, in a configuration similar to that chosen by the Bundeswehr (but for only 17 of its tanks) for an additional cost of €600 million, including the installation of the system by the German industrialist. According to the website Defensereview.gr, the proposal was reportedly welcomed by Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos during a meeting with the German ambassador in Athens yesterday.