The boarding in train of more than 100 armored vehicles of the Spanish Army in Madrid

@DefAviation ES 4·18·2023 · 21:38 0

The XII "Guadarrama" Brigade of the Spanish Army has embarked more than a hundred vehicles by train for Exercise Armor Plate I/23.

The Spanish Leopardo 2E and other allied tanks in a good video of the Latvian Army
The excellent images of the Latvian Army on an exercise with the Spanish military

The purpose of this exercise, which will take place at the "San Gregorio" National Training Center (CENAD) in Zaragoza, is to certify the eFP XIII contingent for its upcoming deployment in Latvia, in addition to maintaining the capabilities of this Brigade as a Spanish component of the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Force (VJTF). The armored vehicles were loaded at the loading dock located to the south of the El Goloso Military Base, in Madrid, where this Brigade is headquartered.

Today the Spanish Army has released an interesting video showing the shipment tasks of Leopard 2E combat tanks, M-109 self-propelled howitzers, M-113 armored transports and Leopard 2ER Buffalo recovery vehicles, among others. The shipment work had the support of personnel from the Railway Company of the Regiment of Pontooners and Specialties of Engineers nº12 (RPEI 12):

You can see here some screenshots of the video, with some notes about what appears in it. In this image we see, on the left, two M-113 armored personnel carriers (the top one looks like an M-113 VCZ sapper vehicle), and on the right a Leopard 2ER Buffalo recovery vehicle and a Leopard 2E tank.

Another image of armored vehicles being loaded onto flatcars. In the wagons on the right we can see, from top to bottom, five Leopardo 2E, four M-109 and six M-113. In the wagons on the right there are ten Leopard 2Es.

One more capture of the embarked vehicles. On the left we see seven Leopard 2Es already on the wagons, and on the right are seven M-113s (the first and third from the top are M-113 sapper vehicles VCZ). In the background on the right, outside the wagons, is parked an Iveco-Pegaso 40.10WM military ambulance.

An overhead shot of the two rows of wagons. Above we show two M-109 and below two Leopard 2E (on the right the barrel of another one appears). These vehicles, due to their size, occupy a single wagon each. The M-113s go two by two in each car.

In its Flickr account, the Spanish Army has published two photos of this shipment . In this we see personnel from the RPEI 12 Railway Company securing one of the Leopardo 2Es on a flat wagon:

In this other photo we see the boarding process of the Leopard 2E .

An enlargement of the previous photo, in which we see the folding of the front protections of the left skirt of a Leopard 2E . This folding is due to the width of this tank, these protections would protrude from the wagon if they are not folded.