In Development: Leopard Cockerill

Commanders!

Today, we’d like to unveil the first vehicle from the upcoming Europe’s Edge Battle Path, which is a Belgian Leopard 1A5 modified by Cockerill with a 3105 series turret – while the vehicle has no official name, we call it Leopard Cockerill to make things simple.

But before we get into the details of the vehicle, a few words about the Battle Path itself. The Europe’s Edge Battle Path returns back to the concept of “historical” Battle Paths in the sense that it will (much like the earlier Rise of the Dragon) feature a set of real, appropriately-themed rewards.

The theme here is cutting edge European technology, which is why it’ll feature recent modern vehicles. The levels leading to each vehicle will be filled with rewards corresponding to their vehicles and the first part is therefore Cockerill-themed.

John Cockerill Defense (previously CMI) is a major tech company. Weapons are only a part of the company’s portfolio but it has a long history of arms production. The rewards of the initial levels of the Battle Path are therefore dedicated to the countries using Cockerill tech, culminating with the abovementioned vehicle unlocked by reaching Level 20.

As for the tank, it is a demonstrator vehicle built by John Cockerill Defense as a private venture by combining the hull of a Belgian Leopard 1A5BE and their commercially available Cockerill 3105 turret.

It serves as a showcase of Cockerill’s ability to upgrade pretty much every vehicle with modern firepower as well as a proof of concept for a potential Leopard 1 series upgrade as this MBT is by now utterly obsolete.

The prototype weighs 39 tons and has a crew of 3 men (driver, gunner and commander) as the gun is automatically loaded. The armor is fairly thin with the hull being steel only and the turret made of military-grade aluminum (STANAG 4569 Level 5 protection). The vehicle is therefore frontally resistant to autocannon rounds but not anything heavy like 125mm guns.

The 3105 turret is armed with an automatically loaded Cockerill HP 105mm rifled gun capable of firing standard NATO ammunition. The gun can depress to -10 degrees, elevate to +42 degrees and can fire 8 rounds per minute from its 12-round magazine (after all, this is a test vehicle). The turret also features advanced optics and many options that depend entirely on the customer. It can be fitted with various types of APS, additional sensors or even more advanced optics. As for the mobility, well – it’s a Leopard 1, which means it’s powered by the 830hp MTU MB 838 Ca M-500 diesel engine, which is a bit more than the Harimau has, but it’s also noticeably heavier.

A single prototype was built in 2022 and showcased at the Eurosatory expo in France. Right now there aren’t any customers interested in upgrading old Leopard 1s specifically but the 3105 series turret is in use on the Harimau Light Tank in Indonesia (which came from cooperation between Indonesia and Turkey).

In Armored Warfare, Leopard Cockerill will be a Tier 8 Premium Light Tank.

We decided to classify this vehicle as a Light Tank despite it actually being a Medium Tank because, for the purposes of this game, this is a combination of a Leopard 1 hull and Harimau turret. Of all our vehicles it really is the closest to the Harimau and we went from there.

In short, this tank is a Premium version of the Harimau with some differences:

• Hull is much better armored (corresponds to the ingame Leopard 1A5)
• It’s less mobile and heavier (slower, accelerates worse and is less agile)
• It offers the 6-round clip only instead of two alternative configurations
• Does not feature hard-kill APS, only soft-kill

In short, you know what to expect from this tank. It will not have any new special abilities or mechanics, it’s simply a solid vehicle that’ll do the job on the battlefield the way Harimau does.

We hope you’ll enjoy it and, as always:

See you on the battlefield!