British and French soldiers who are part of NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup in Estonia pitted their respective main battle tanks, the UK Challenger 2 and the French Leclerc, against each other in a test of accuracy and speed of destruction at Adazi Training Base in Latvia. The competition was part of a training exercise that saw soldiers from different nations come together to practise their skills and interoperability. Although the competition was carried out in a friendly spirit, it was highly competitive.
The FV4034 Challenger 2 (MOD designation “CR2”) is a third generation British main battle tank (MBT) in service with the armies of the United Kingdom and Oman. It was designed and built by the British company Vickers Defence Systems (now known as BAE Systems Land & Armaments).The Leclerc tank (char Leclerc) is a main battle tank (MBT) built by GIAT, now Nexter of France. The Leclerc is in service with the French Army and the United Arab Emirates Army. The price in 2011 was €9.3 million, which made it the most expensive tank in history at the time.
Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) is a NATO-allied forward deployed defense and deterrence military posture in Eastern and Northern Europe to protect and reassure NATO’s Eastern European member states of their security. Following Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea and its War in Donbass, NATO member states agreed at the 2016 Warsaw summit to forward deploy four multinational battalion battle groups to NATO members most at risk of a possible Russian attack or invasion. The four multinational battalion battle groups are based in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, and led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and the United States.
