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Leopard 2PL Prototype in 2016
Chief of the Polish Ministry’s of Defence Armament Inspectorate, gen. Adam Duda, announced that the Ministry has received three offers related to modernization of the Leopard 2A4 tanks - two coming from the German Companies - KMW Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall, and one from the Turkish Aselsan company. The Ministry of Defence is going to select the modernization programme (out of the three offers mentioned above) which is going to be pursued. The selection is going to be made in October. In 2016 a prototype is planned to be created, in line with the standard which is going to be implemented, in total, in case of 142 main battle tanks used by the Polish Army.
According to the information released by General Adam Duda, working as the chief at the Armament Inspectorate, not only is the modernization programme going to cover modifications of 128 Leopard 2A4 tanks acquired initially, as the works are going to be carried out also in case of the 14 examples procured together with the Leopard 2A5 vehicles, purchase of which was realized back in 2013.
One of the three modernization offers is going to be selected in October, out of the proposals submitted by one of the three companies: Turkish Aselsan or German KMW Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, or Rheinmetall companies. The modernization programme is planned to be realized in cooperation with the Polish Armament Group. The agreement with the task consortium, formed by the Polish companies cooperating with the foreign partner, should be signed until the end of this year.
According to the Ministry of Defence, the above would make it possible to execute the works and create the prototype of the Leopard 2PL which is to be a modernized variant of the Leopard 2A4 tank in 2016. Next, a respective test programme is going to be carried out. This is going to make it possible to realize the modernization programme involving all of the 142 tanks that are being used by the Polish Army.
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