New MBT122B Evolution with Unprecedented Protection

The Swedish MBT122 has already been recognized as one of the best-protected main battle tanks in the world.

In a recent study program of the tank for the Swedish Defence Material Administration (FMV) in Sweden, IBD Deisenroth Engineering succeeded in the development of a further improved protection dedicated to the tank. The concept is thereby designed to protect against the actual and future threats in theatre, especially in asymmetric and urban warfare.

IBD's focus in this development was the optimization of the protection against the actual threats in theatre: new variants of RPGs, IEDs and EFPs as well as keeping high protection against “conventional threats”. A new light weight and highly efficient SLAT armour was designed as an amendment of the protection concept. The effectiveness of the new solutions has been verified against all threats in a broad test campaign. Thanks to all these efforts the concept provides an outstanding 360 degree protection of the crew.

The completely modular design of the concept allows the use of any mixture of old and new protection modules. This solution is of great advantage in theatre with regard to maintenance and repairs.

Despite the improved overall protection level of the MBT 122B Evolution the weight increase of about 350 kg is only minimal such maintaining the high mobility of the tank. Also the width of the vehicle could be kept to exactly 4.0 m which is also an important factor for the use in urban environment.

The new protection concept is the latest variant of similar high level protection solutions (defined as Evolution Concepts) from IBD for different platforms that have been developed, where the kits based on the platform Leopard 2 A4 Evolution have already been supplied to customers.