Germany’s Leopard 2 is, in contrast, a full-on main battle tank, weighing in at around 66 tons. The French army uses the AMX-10 primarily as a reconnaissance vehicle, and started phasing them out in 2021 to be replaced by the EBRC Jaguar, an armored car.

The French military found them to be reliable and fairly mobile in African fighting, but overly poorly-armored even to be considered for use in conventional battle featuring tank-to-tank slug matches, anti-tank missiles, and dense artillery strikes. The problem, as military analysts in and outside Ukraine were quick to point out, is that a French AMX-10 is only marginally comparable to a German Leopard, and by many standards the AMX isn’t really a tank at all.ĭeveloped during the 1970s and – a little surprisingly - still currently serving with the French army, the AMX-10 is a wheeled vehicle with a 105 mm cannon that was outdated by the latter stages of the Cold War, optics allowing gunners to hit targets out to about 1,500 meters, and aluminum armor thick enough to keep out shell splinters, most machine gun bullets and small cannon shells, but nothing bigger.Īt full load-out the vehicle weighs 22 tons. A Scholz critic, she noted that 'France is once again taking on the role that was expected of Germany.' 'The argument constantly advanced by the chancellery that Germany must not go it alone is absolutely out of date,' German lawmaker Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann told AFP on the subject of tanks to Ukraine. France’s recent announcement that it will send Ukraine AMX-10 fighting vehicles triggered speculation across Europe that since Paris just decided to hand over ' tanks' to Kyiv, Berlin should follow suit with its world-class Leopard 2.įrance’s top news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) led Wednesday reporting on the AMX-10 transfer, as 'German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faced renewed calls Thursday to deliver Leopard tanks long sought by Kyiv, after France became the first in the West to agree to supply light tanks to Ukraine.'

Modern tank destroyer amx-10rcr