Very likely not indeed, but it was kept in-service with the armour package untill their retirement in 2014-2016. Based on the time the prototype was trialed, it would likely use these munitions:
When I wrote the MEXAS suggestion, I got in touch with the museum that owns the prototype to ask them if it would have used any different ammunition types. I got a reply that there was no difference and it used the same shells as the other Leopards until retirement. So that pretty much confirms there is no difference in used shells compared to the regular 1A5BE
To be fair now, there’s a chance the person who responded thought you were talking about the types of ammo, not the specific model of shells. If the MEXAS prototype’s last firing (which I assume was during testing right?) was during the 2000s, I would not expect it to be armed with, say, some of the later M1060 variants.
Not that it matters all that much, just curious about where some of these variants fit in along the Mecar APFSDS timeline.
Good and bad news for the Belgian Leopard 1A5BE (depending on how you look at it):
The missing M1061 (M456A2) HEAT and M393A2 HESH rounds are already present in the game, Gaijin simply chose not to add them to the vehicle for which they make the most historical sense. Instead, they are currently available on the much newer CT-CV 105 HP and CV90105 Cockerill vehicles.
In other words, Gaijin has already modelled these Belgian rounds and assigned them to modern Belgian export turrets, but not to the Belgian Leopard 1 that historically would have used this family of ammunition.
This means that two of these bug reports should really be straightforward corrections and arguably should never have been necessary in the first place.
Should Gaijin accept these latter two reports, there would be no need to create new ammunition models or introduce new data. The rounds already exist in-game; it would simply be a matter of assigning existing Belgian ammunition to a Belgian vehicle equipped with a compatible 105 mm L7 gun.
It would really have exactly the same ammo as the other 1A5BEs. The MEXAS was not retired before the others. It kept the armour package and returned to service. So yes, the MEXAS leopard was actually in operational service.
Since it wasn’t retired early and kept the armour package until the end, there’s no reason why it should receive any different shells than the others.
Yes, unfortunately so.
It also has been given the same weight as other Leopard 1A5s despite lacking the Blohm & Voss Armour package. I’m still looking for sources on the exact weight of that package so I can bug report it.
