The PzH 2000 or Panzerhaubitze 2000 is an armored howizter in-service in the German army. Designed in 1996 and first produced in 1998, the PzH 2000 brings an awesome array of firepower to the table. It’s a 155 mm self-propelled howizter and is in use with Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Greece. Germany has the largest inventory of these armored vehicles in service and has 185. Germany will however reduce this amount to 154 with 31 to be kept in storage. While other countries have fewer than 70 with Italy being the only other country to have a significant amount of these armored vehicles in their military.

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PzH specification

Total weight: 55.8 tons

Turret weight: 16.5 tons

Range: 261 miles

Length – Width – Height: 11.7 m – 3.6 m – 3.1 m

Armor: 14.5 mm resistant and additional protection vs mines and IEDs.

Unit cost: $4.5 million

Main armament: 155 mm L52 Artillery Gun produced by Rheinmetall

Ammo capacity: 60 rounds of various types of munitions

Gun range: 56 km or 34 miles

Secondary armament:  MG3 7.62 mm machine gun produced by Rheinmetall

Speed:

Road: 41 mph

Off-road: 28 mph

Other information

The Dutch Army in August 2006 used the PzH 2000 against the Taliban for the first time in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in a supportive role towards Canadian-led Operation Medusa. It has since been used extensively during ongoing operations in Afghanistan. The armored vehicle has been critisized, as well, as when originally flown to Afghanistan it could not cope with conditions in Afghanistan and its NBC system needed to be upgraded as it was designed to cope with conditions in Europe, not Afghanistan. It also received armor upgrades to its roof to protect it against mortars and other rounds. The Germans however used the armored vehicle a little later in, and since the beginning of 2010, the German ISAF force have used the PzH 2000 quite extensively and they were first used in anger on the 10th of July 2010 where they provided cover to help the recovery of a damaged armored vehicle.

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