only leopard 2PL, 2A4M and 2A7 have gen 3, gen 1 is standard for the br.
clickbait has better reload, mobility and comparable armour to all non-uparmoured leopard 2s.
gen 1 thermals is fine.
Those are light tanks mostly, not MBTs.
Are you talking about? The US had the best thermals with the Hughes system forever.
The French Catherine was good but nowhere near the second generation US thermals.
The only reason the French are known for having great thermals now is because they invested a lot of money and upgraded to GEN 3…. The US second generation thermals haven’t needed to upgrade because they were capable at 2500 m.
What are thermals actually? They are lenses and electronics and most importantly that people don’t understand, noise filters all put together in a digital processing unit…. guess who’s always the world leader in all of these technologies?
It’s not like the French have their own chip foundries and lensing facilities. French thermals just mean a French design.
But no one on earth has better thermals and has done more research on them than darpa. Small military contractors like Rafael simply cannot keep up with Boeing and Lockheed and Raytheon who were using satellites with the thermals 20 years before anyone else.