Yesterday Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre stood outside in the middle of a serious snowfall at the military base in Rena and declared that Norway will get 54 new tanks with an option for 18 more, and that these will be Leopard 2A7NO ordered from KMW.

This put an at least temporarily to rest the debate about the role of tanks and the future of the mechanised Brigade Nord which was a strange story of late last year, and which I discussed in the post which caused by far the most significant reaction in mainstream media any of my posts have seen.

This is the picture KMW chose when they wanted to present the features of the Leopard 2A7NO. Some of the features visible are the additional belly armour, the top-notch 120 mm L55A1 gun, APU, and the main sights and vision systems (PERI RTWL and EMES 15 for…