Why didn't the americans just buy centurions after WW2...

>Why didn't the americans just buy centurions after WW2?

Because maintaining the industrial and engineering expertise on how to design an effective tank to your needs is infinitely more important than eking out some marginal advantage by buying a foreign design.

Same reason France and Germany design their own tanks. Same reason Britain uses Challenger IIs and not Abrams or Leo 2s.

Legit question here - why don't the Britbongs seem to export their weapons as much as they used to? Tons of countries (Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Singapore) operate the Leopard 2, but I think only Qatar operates the Challenger 2 besides the UK.

The centurion was at the time the best allied tank.

The chally dosent accept standard nato ammo. Kind of a big deal for small countries

It wasn't superior enough to consider scrapping the entire Patton development. It was moderately superior to the M26, but the M46 closed the gap pretty fast.

>The Chally 2 is in all aspects superior to every iteration of the Leopard 2
It's literally the worst modern western mbt.

Based answer

The early Centurion was nothing to write home about and also suffered like the M28 from mechanical problems.

The reputation of the Centurion came from the later 105mm gun variant.

Because the Challenger II was the butt of all jokes everytime it went to a trial for a deal.

Then why not license build them? They did it with the FT17

A. Who cares.

B. How would these millenial anime image board faggots know what the Pentagon was thinking in regards to their purchases and R&D?

Because in the historical context America did not want a strong Britain

Following WW2 the trade unions looked to take more powers after towing the line through the war, to America this had strong undertones of a red rose in England - thus Britain, despite being a member of the allies, had far less support in rebuilding that the nation that lost the war

Because the USA had so many tanks after WWII that they didn't know what to do. Everyone who wanted a tank got a tank basically for free.

because the Centurion wasn't an improvement over anything America had at that time.

i wish it was still like that today. i wanna drive a sherman in the woods

>Buying a British tank is like purchasing an Australian car. It's a shit machine design by retarded engineers, but you buy it out of pity since you want to give that economically vulnerable country some sorely needed business.
This

lol

>the centurion was better than anything

>shitty horstmann suspension with limited vertical travel
>no optical rangefinder
>no HEAT rounds
>slow top speed and poor acceleration

Probably the worst western MBT if you don't consider the Ariete

waht the fuck is a optical racegunbsdefer0=

/thread

At least the C1 Ariete has a NATO-compatible 120 mm smoothbore gun, decent FCS & optics and a better power-to-weight ratio.

Attached: C1 Ariete uparmored irak.jpg (850x636, 51K)

Because the M48 was flat out better in most ways. Frontal armor profile was immune to the Soviet 100 mm gun when it was first built, something the Centurion could not claim. It’s suspension system was superior, it’s mobility was equal/slightly better cross-country and superior on roads. It’s HEAT shells could actually deal with period threats reasonably well, and we could produce a shitload of them while we waited for 105 mm M68 production to pick up for the M60.

Quite literally the only practical advantage a Centurion has is its stabilizer, but the Centurion doesn’t have the electro-mechanical fire control system which makes the M48 so accurate in defensive positions.

Neither does the Leclerc or pretty much anything in NATO that's not the Abrams or Leo

And the leclerc isnt sold more than the chally. You are literally making my point?

The LeClerc sold more tanks than the Challenger II.

The Leclerc uses NATO standard 120x570mm ammo.

Attached: 120mm HE Nexter.jpg (623x401, 23K)

Reminder that the early centurion was shitty and that by the time a decent tank came out if it with the 105 the US had the M48, which was an arguably superior tank design. The centurion is overrated.

Even if Centurion overfilled whatever requirements the Americans had give to it, somebody would have turned it down.

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yeah, about that british tank-building industrial base...

>crash gearbox
>worse fuel economy than Abrahams
>shitty British electrical, probably positive 6v ground like a fucking Triumph
I'll take the Pershing, thanks.

they did, just not for themselves
>A further side effect of the potential tank shortage was the US government becoming the largest buyer of British Centurion tanks behind Britain herself. The US distributed these tanks to its European allies under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program starting in the early 1950s.
afvdatabase.com/history.html

That is more to do with the German military and then subsequently other European militaries selling off their Leos dirt cheap when they downsized. Leo 2s get passed around the EU like a drunk whore at a frat party.

yeah just like their use of the french 75 mm, copy of the german 37 mm, use of the british 57 mm, fn mag, british- and german-derived tank guns postwar, mowag piranha-derived lav and stryker, m93 fox, etc. stupid foreign-hating not-invented-here americans

precisley what said

Bong Tanks have always kinda been bad. The Goodsolid is actually the only one that's somewhat good and it isn't really better than it's contemporaries, just on par.

The Leopard 2 won like all contracts for new built tanks against Abrams and co.

The only exceptions are Turkey and India which decided to go full retard with own tank designs.

>but muh 105mm gun

Ignoring that the 105mm gun was introduced in 1959. Ignoring that the way superior Leopard 1 and M60 went into service just a few years later.

you'd prefer the 90 mm over the 20 pdr?

In reality there wasn't a big difference between those guns.

>It's a shit machine design by retarded engineers

ala American cars

Don't throw stones from a glass house, cunt.

Plus. Making your own tanks means giving massive factory jobs to your own population. And big money to the factory owners who will be supporting your next political campaign.

Logistics. The M47/48 were made by slightly modifying the M24 Pershing, which required minimal retooling as all the factory tools were down to make more, and this was the case up until the M60. It would have cost an arm and a leg and time the US didn't know it had to shift over from producing Pattons to producing Centurions, which is why it opted to stick with the Pershing model for so long.

Eh. You do not want to start a discussion about the quality of postwar English cars.

user pls

Neither Bong, Australian, or American cars are really shit. You can't say they're top of the line in spite of what Ford wants you to think about its trucks, but they're meant to be some combination of reliable, rugged, and most importantly easy to service, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say about the "luxury" brands like BMW.

If you want to know what an actual shitty car looks like, go to Eastern Europe.

Postwar English vehicles make Yugos look luxurious.

They were also sold as refurbished surplus to pretty much anywhere that would take them. Half of Europe is using secondhand cats, third hand tanks being not unheard of. It makes sense really. The tanks perform well, have a slew of upgrade packages, are dirt cheap and because so many were built parts and spares can be easily cannibalised to keep a fleet in operation.

The land rover is an amazing vehicle. Only the recent iterations have been shit, because they're trying to appeal to the mddle class school run mummies.

This is not all that relevant if we are talking why the Challenger II wasn't sold more.

Why not? If a tank that was judged to be better by the British army itself is available for cheaper, then why spend for a new build tank?

seething assmad abo detected.

the idea of failure is that you try to improve from each one

buying something would've made sure the M1A1 didn't happen and the ensuring mass production methods of bucket with a bucket lid method get upgraded

because seriously, the M1A1 is two fucking square buckets one on top of the other with long singular welds and bolts holding it down

they fucking pull them apart to sand blast them on large cranes when pulled apart for full maint.

>Legit question here - why don't the Britbongs seem to export their weapons as much as they used to?
Because they don't make decent weapons anymore

they were considering upgrades to the abrams production process when they were making tank procurement decisions in the early '50s?

if parts were easily accessible, I would much rather have a shitbox Lada than any of the poorly-proportioned, zero-visibility abominations that people call "cars" in 2019. The Lada is unironically better in almost every way other than the fact that its performance is incredibly anemic.
>t. got to borrow friend's Lada for a week while muh Dodge was in the shop

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What manner of retarded drivel is this?

is there any part of Eastern Europe & the Balkans that doesn't look like a bleak and depressed, post-soviet shithole?

The EU parts

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nice

Central Moscow has been polished up quite well.

ayy polebro, what city would you recommend to a estonian tourist?

Sorry not a pole. Just visited it on two different occasions and saw the difference a few years of EU funds can do

You do realize the Lada was literally an old Fiat the soviets bought the worn down factory for from the Italian then commie government wholesale?

Because anglo le bad

Because that would have required forward thinking, and a modicum of humility. We're talking about Cold War Amerivan military here. It was essentially 60 years of buzz cuts, circlejerking over Korea, and knowing they could do fuck-all but confess their love for each other if the Chicoms or Russkies ever pushed the button.

>Buying a shittier tank when you could make your own
>Forward thinking

>meanwhile most English car companies have failed miserably and been sold, or survive off the scraps of Germans.

Oh the irony.

>The Leopard 2 won like all contracts for new built tanks against Abrams and co.
maybe because the US won't sell you the ammo for the M256 or the armor they use.

Don't forget that half of their components come from the EU, and Brexit will spell the end of the last remnants of the British car industry
ft.com/content/912856f0-afbe-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2

Based on that large Sweden trial the Leopard 2 won the categories mobility, protection and firepower. Abrams won the commando & control category.

Attached: leopard+abrams+leclerc+turret+comparison.jpg (1279x959, 102K)

The British industry is a joke. Today, another historic shipyard (Harland & Wolff) in the UK got closed.

And they are on a good way to destroy the aerospace industry.

the American car stereotype is basically a 40 year old game of telephone after the disaster of the 70s US auto industry. The people saying American cars are shit in 2019 are repeating something they heard a TV sitcom character say 25 years ago, who was themselves making a 15 year old joke.

you have no idea what you are talking about. you are literally repeating a meme from 1978 that hasn't been true for your entire lifetime. Go huff gas

The original question I replied to was asking why the Brits didn't export their MBT more, and why everyone else ended up using Leos. The market being saturated with cheap surplus might well have played in to that.

Norway operates the Leo 2 as main battletank. We got about 60 of them for pocket change in the late 1980s from Netherland as part of the great dsarmament plan. Norway was bound by the then treaty to not increase our little vehicle park. But, at the time our sole armor was a handful of Leo 1s and the rest were venerable M48s. So for every Leo 2 we took in, one of the old junk cans were disposed of. The Russians were absolutely furious becase our offensive power was effectively tripled but it wasn't breaking the treaty. Total price for 50 tanks in then money was something like 180 million dollars. That's scrap iron prices.

if only one - Kraków
if three Kraków, Zamość, Warszawa
t.someone from Żagań

A new built tank would have never have competed in those markets anyway. And in the trials it went for new tanks it was the buttjoke of the trial.

Was the Leclerc improved at all since? Because it seems very poorly protected compared to even the export Abrams.

>Due to the introduction of modernised threats, batch 3 vehicles have a new armour package, including composite armour, titanium insert and on the sides of the turret, ERA blocks.

I think the Emirates (?) have a modernized Tropical Leclerc with a lot more armor added everywhere on the front

The C2's armor was warned that in time it would slowly separate and become useless requirement replacement. Great more jobs they said.
Never got around to ever replacing the aged now worthless armor because it costs too much.

The Army is truely in a sad state. All the industry is done so everytime they would actually get something new it would something German.

The Swedish have never received any information regarding the Leclerc composite armor package.

Two French books mention that its frontal 60 degree arc was able to defeat 120 mm APFSDS and large caliber shaped charges.

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>UN tanks
I'm intrigued

Americans should have bought the Leopard 2.

Attached: Strv122_3.jpg (2592x1944, 2.36M)

Why?

>Europeans are so insecure and emotionally weighed down by an inferiority complex that they only way they can appreciate their own tanks is through the validation of having an American purchase them

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Merkava crews were mad at them because the French were constantly triggering their LWR with their laser rangefinders.

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this kek. Of all countries that manufacture tanks, not sure why eurotrash are this desperate to have americans buy their tanks.