AMX Leclerc is a French main battle tank developed by GIAT Industries (now Nexter Systems).

GIAT Industries designed the Leclerc in the 1980s, between 1983 and 1989, and produced the tank between 1990 and 2007.

Approximately 862 units have been built and although the production line was closed in 2008, Nexter retained the capability of restarting the production.

The price of a Leclerc tank was 104,304,000 French francs in 1993, while the cost per unit in 2011 was €9.3 million, Leclerc being one of the most expensive tanks in the world.

Named after World War 2 french general Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, the Leclerc MBT entered French Army service in 1992.

Although the French main battle tank is commonly known as AMX-56 Leclerc, the "AMX-56" designation is incorrect and is not an official one.

In general, Leclerc MBT has a mass of approximately 56 tonnes, depending on the variant.

Séries 1 has a total mass of 54.5 tonnes, Séries 2 weights 56.3 tonnes, while Séries XXI is the heaviest with a weight of 57.4 tonnes.

Regarding the dimensions, Leclerc tank has a length of 9.87 m including the gun and 6.88 m without the gun. It has a width of 3.60 and a height of 2.53 m.

The crew of the Leclerc consists of three (3) persons including the commander, the gunner, and the driver.

Leclerc main gun is a 52 calibres long, 120 mm modele F1 smoothbore cannon manufactured by GIAT (Nexter).

The official designation of the cannon is CN120-26.

Being a 52 calibres long barrel, the 120 mm modele F1 (CN120-26) gun fires the projectiles with a high muzzle velocity.

The CN120-26 gun has an autoloading system designated CHA (French: CHargement Automatique, "automatic loading"), designed by Creusot-Loire Industrie and a rate of fire of twelve (12) shots per minute.

It can fire six types of ammunition including the armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) and high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds.

As secondary armament, Leclerc is equipped with a 12.7 mm coaxial machine gun and a 7.62 mm remote-controlled machine gun.

The Leclerc main battle tank was produces in three main variants Séries 1, Séries 2, and Séries XXI.

Séries 1 was the first production model, while Séries 2 and the later Séries XXI each came with a series of improvements over the previous model.

Leclerc has modular composite armour and the Séries XXI variant armour includes titanium and semi-reactive layers.

The French Leclerc MBT is powered by a an 8-cylinder 1,500 hp SACM (now Wärtsilä) V8X-1500 Hyperbar diesel engine.

Being a hyperbaric engine, it incorporates a Turbomeca TM 307B gas turbine which acts as a turbocharger to increase the power and also as an auxiliary power unit (APU) to provide energy to the tank's systems when the main engine is shut down.

The Wärtsilä V8X-1500 engine is coupled to a Renk AG automatic transmission with seven gears (5 forward gears and 2 reverse gears).