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| Indonesia recently received their first Leopard 2A4 tank and Marder IFV from Germany as part of a larger deal. Photo taken from Kaskus forums c/o Audrey. |
Is there a main battle tank race in the ASEAN region? Well, from MaxDefense point of view, there is a spike of purchases and interests for main battle tanks in the region that started a few years ago, and a so-called race is probably only happening in a few member countries.
Within the Southeast Asian region, only the mainland states of Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia traditionally operate tanks heavier than 35 tons, although it is a very well known secret that Singapore keeps an arsenal of main battle tanks since the mid 1970s to avoid giving their perceived threats a reason to include main battle tanks in their arsenal.
Traditional Tank Users:
Vietnam:
Of all ASEAN armies, Vietnam has the largest tank fleet and has been a long time user of Soviet-era T-54/55 series and Chinese Type 59 medium tanks, with several units actually being Vietnam War veterans. Of the estimated 600 to 850 T-54/55 tanks in Vietnamese serivce, around 310 were modernized using Israeli technology into T-54/55M3 standards which involved the replacement of the original Soviet 100mm gun with a 105mm M68/L7 gun, installation of explosive reactive armor, smoke grenade launchers, a new German-made 1,000hp engine, a 60mm mortar and meteo-sensors technology. There were previous reports that Vietnam planned to purchase 150 T-72 main battle tanks from Poland, but did not materialize and budget was instead used to purchase naval assets.
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| A Vietnamese T-54/55 series tank, modernized by Israel to T-54M3 standard. Photo taken from ttvnol.com |
