Lets see…
- Boxer in morbillion variants
- Puma IFV
- Lynx
- Leopard 2 turrets
- ammunition for all of their vehicles
- Fennek
- Eurofighter (yes, German does have a plant)
- G95A1
- all of the Leopard 2 sub-components
- armour for their vehicles
Well, seems like quite a few things.
I don’t know what your experience with the thermal imagers from European manufacturers are, but this might just be up to US military/manufacturer just utilizing better screens for displaying the output. Technologically, there is no lead on either side.
But okay, lets talk thermal imagers and MBTs.
When the Leopard 2A5 upgrade was developed, there were two second-generation thermal imaging sensors available in Germany, both designed as part of the tri-national TRIGAT (third generation anti-tank) missile program that lead to the failure that is PARS 3 LR. A small, low-cost IRCCD sensor using a 40 x 4 detector array for the short-range variant of TRIGAT meant to replace MILAN and a large sensor utilizing a 288 x 4 detector array meant for the long-range version (which ended up being PARS 3 LR).
At the time, the latter sensor was considered unreasonable expensive, specifically given that the change in the political landscape had a negative impact on the military budgets in Germany and other LEOBEN countries, while the smaller sensor array was considered to provide insufficient resolution. As a result using the US-German Common Modules for the Leopard 2A5’s commander periscope or developing a new IRCCD with lower cost than TRIGAT’s larger option, but better resolution than TRIGAT’s small model, was considered. Both these systems were tested on the Leopard 2 prototypes (TVM min with the US-German Common Modules, TVM max with a new sensor).
The new sensors was developed by AEG and uses a 96 x 4 IRCCD detector array and was installed into the new Optischer Passiver Hoch-Empfindlicher Leichter Infrarot-Optischer Sensor (OPHELIOS) thermal imaging system developed by a cooperation between Carl-Zeiss, Atlas Elektronik, AEG, TEMIC EZIS and Eltro. This rather low sensor resultion was somewhat negated by a using a special sensor layout, where the detector array was split into two blocks, slightly shifted in alignment, apparently for better image quality. The software of the OPHELIOS thermal imager was already designed to accept the larger sensor developed for TRIGAT with 288 x 4 detector elements, but this upgrade was never made for Germany’s tanks at least following the improved relations with Russia and later the focus on assymetrical warfare. An upgrade of the Leopard 2’s thermal imager would likely have occured with the KWS III originally planned for 2008, as this would have required a new FCS and new optics.
The US Army settled for a much larger detector array with 480 x 4 detector elements, which was partly possible due to adopting second-generation thermal imagers at a later point of time; this means that more mature manufacturing techniques and smaller process nodes could be used for manufacturing, which are some of the main drivers of the costs of electronics. This detector array is clearly better than the one utilized on OPHELIOS in terms of resolution per scan. In terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. the most important factor for image quality besides sharpness/resolution), these sensors are all on equal terms, as they all have a TDI of 4 (they rely on scanning each position four times). This allows reducing the noise compared to a first generation thermal imager by half (the square root of the TDI).
It must be noted that there are further fators that need to be accounted for such as the aperature, the quality of the lenses and prisms, the scan rate, thermal sensitivity, etc. These factors for example allowed the EMES 15 with WBG-X to provide better results (according to the US evaluation of the Leopard 2AV) than the Abrams’ TIS despite both relying on Common Modules with a 120 x 1 detector array. Based on what I’ve read, both Raytheon’s second gen FLIR aswell as the AEG-designed IRCCD array for the OPHELIOS rely on CMT with similiar thermal sensititvity (7.5 to 10.5 µm); in theory using a smaller detector in combination with a higher scan rate and larger scan amplitude could provide the same output resolution as a larger detector array scanning slower/less.
The larger detector array of Raytheon’s second-gen FLIR is nothing special and not related to the Americans “just being better at making thermals”. I.e. in 2000 - one year after the US adopted second generation FLIR - a new thermal imager made by the German industry around Carl-Zeiss was tested on the Leopard 2 called the HDIR. This was designed around a 576 x n detector array (n being 4 for the model tested on the Leopard 2) and provided an output resolution of 1,920 x 1,152 without using inter-lacing. In a comparison with WBG-X and OPHELIOS, it was found that HDIR allowed to detect (persuambly NATO standard) targets at up to 60% further distances. They made a thermal imager with 20% more detector elements one year after Raytheon’s second generation FLIR entered service, but hey, “the Europeans are always a generation behind in thermals”.
The idea that European thermal imagers are in terms of performance behind US systems is laughable. All these systems are following the same laws of physics. Hendoldt’s ATTICA thermal imager was designed as a modular family, coming in different shapes and sizes (i.e. small, medium and large detector arrays), which is the standard approach on the market today. Even the “small version” of ATTICA as fitted to the Puma IFV has 57 times as many detector elements as the Abrams’ second generation FLIR. The medium versions use a 640 x 512 detector array, while the large one offers a 1,280 x 1,024 detector array, i.e. up to 682 times as many detector elements. As common with third generation thermal imagers, they are available either based on CMT or InSb, i.e. in different wave-lengths.
For the third generation thermal imagers, Raytheon for example had developed two variants of the 3rd-Generation FLIR Sensor Engine; one with a 640 x 480 detector array and a 1,280 x 720 elements detector array, as the US military favors the 16:9 wide-screen format, so I don’t see how this should enable them to stay a generation ahead of Europe. Safran, Thales, Leonardo, Hensoldt, etc. are all making similar-sized detector arrays.
