It takes five gallons just to start the thing!
Lets see, 504 gallons of JP8 gets you about 200 miles. However it weighs 70 tons too so its possibly more fuel efficient by weight than a SUV!
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During actual combat the energy comes from a heat exchanger wrapped around the 120-millimetre gun barrel.
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This is exactly right.
Britain only has 227 Challengers but Europe as a whole has 2,000 Leopard tanks, which frankly if we smash up Russia’s army enough won’t be needed for defence because there aren’t any other real enemies left who we could get at with tanks.
It’s not just the tanks, it’s also the transport, engineering support and recovery vehicles, which are fairly thin on the ground, but if all of western Europe’s units were available to draw on, it would be a formidable force.
Russia has about 6,000 T-62 tanks in mothball storage, but they are two generations old, also they need crews.
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Hahaha, that’s a pretty funny read- angry tank nerds trying to win arguments by posting classified documents in stupid war nerd forums. 
Male ego will be the death of us all.
Oh, internet…
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Also the parts supply chains aren’t there. Tanks are as much about maintenance as anything, and they need a lot of it. It’s no good having the best tank in the world when it throws a bearing and the closest replacement is 9000 kilometres away. Since the Leopards are very widely used all over Europe, parts will be available.
Military vehicles are not pieces on a chessboard, the way the media tends to talk about them. They are a system of parts, crews, training, documentation, maintenance schedules, etc. All of that infrastructure has to go with them or they lose effectiveness at the first flat tire. There’s a reason terrorist groups and militias all run “technicals”, which are generally beat up old Toyota Hiluxes with big guns bolted into the beds. There’s no shortage of old military hardware lying around in Afghanistan from all the failed invasions over the decades, but the locals can’t get parts, documentation, or the right fuels and lubricants for them.
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Had a friend that was in the Marines in Vietnam that used to explain it exactly that way.
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“Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.”
– Omar N. Bradley
“An army marches on its spare parts.”
– probably not Napoleon Bonaparte
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To combine two of your prior statements, for mechanized soldiers deployments are like camping trips where you spend your free time cleaning the engine air filters, maintaining and tensioning the tracks and cleaning the sub-turret.
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That, plus dodging the small-arms fire, mortar rounds, artillery shells, aerial bombs, and other miscellaneous ordnance that the other side is launching at you.
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You have a funny idea of free time 
. I don’t think I want to come over to hang out after all.
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I’m never going camping with either of you.
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Yeah, they aren’t likely to be invaded, but, much like the U.S., Britain has had a little bit of experience invading others, so you’d think they would have plenty of equipment on hand to do that.
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I’m glad I’m not a coffee person and drink way more Coke than tea. All I need to do is grab one from whatever convenience store we’ve destroyed in whatever country I’m in. /s
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“I know I could go to jail for this, but godammit somebody is wrong on the internet! They must know I’m a hardcore expert and they are a dumb noob who doesn’t even have access to classified documents!”
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“Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive”
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The thing is, the invasion of Ukraine has proved that Putin is unconcerned with whether he has any “excuses” or “provocations.” He is a distillation of the Machiavellian idea that rulers in their role as leaders of nations should not be constrained by the morality that guides individuals. He’s not “a madman,” but his amoral unconcern for how he is viewed reminds people of one. Leaders like him can’t be “appeased” because they are only constrained by the ability of others to actually stop them.
Fundamentally, he started this war not because some Ukrainian action that could have been avoided “triggered,” him, but simply because he thought that the West was fundamentally weak, if not on a physical and material level, at a moral level. It looks like he STILL thinks this, and although he has started to recognize that the West is not quite the pushover that he had anticipated. At this point, he seems to think that the Russian people will be willing to pay a higher price in blood than the West is willing to pay in treasure.
Rhetorically, he threatens escalation, but practically? He has seen just how effective a Western trained army can be against the Russian one. And the balance of nuclear forces that have thus far dissuaded him from using going nuclear haven’t changed.
Edited to add: The flip side of “He doesn’t need an excuse to invade,” is “An excuse won’t lead him to precipitous escalation.” Although it IS important to recognize that for him personally, this IS an existential war in the way he tries to convince people that is is for the Russian state and people. If he loses he is OUT. And he has spent years making sure that he has control over the state. So there may well come a time when he is willing to “roll the dice,” on a wider war. My suspicion is that only then will the Russian military balk and he will be deposed.
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Available in either 6v or 12v versions.
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Case in point, Germany fielded tanks with far more firepower and armor than their opponents in WWII. But they could never produce enough of them, keep them functional, fuel or were too specialized for some environments. For example Panther and Tiger tanks had a very complicated interlocking wheel/tread system which made them resistant to hits from the side. But they were a total “bear” to replace and service in the field.
The Allies and Soviets had tanks which were quick to produce, had ample fuel logistics, were simple to maintain. Plenty of Shermans and T-34’s were lost to the Germans, but there were always more where they came from.
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Same philosophy was applied to the Liberty Ships. Rather than up-armour them to cope with U-boats, they literally produced them faster than they could be sunk. WWII was a war of manufacturing, not technology.
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