“Color Fantasy”: Cruise ship transports fashionable Leopard tanks from Kiel to Norway | EUROtoday

A particular sight within the port of Kiel: two of the brand new Leopard 2 A8s rolled there for the primary time on Wednesday. They had been taken to Oslo on the ferry “Color Fantasy”. This is what the “Kieler Nachrichten” stories. The ferry is marketed by the delivery firm as a “cruise ship with a car deck”, however is operated as a automotive ferry.

The Leopard 2 A8 prices slightly below 30 million euros and weighs 69 tons. The Norwegian military has ordered 54 of those battle tanks from the KNDS firm in Munich.

“They are among the first examples of this type for Norway,” says Christian Budde, spokesman for the producer KNDS, to the “Kieler Nachrichten”. “These tanks are obviously difficult to hide given their size.”

For transport, the tanks had been rolled onto low-loaders and despatched as heavy transport on the motorway to Kiel, in line with the article. The Kiel-Oslo ferries have ramps specifically designed for tanks and heavy items, in order that the virtually 100-ton semi-trailers with the tanks can roll safely on board.

In complete, KNDS has obtained round 350 orders for this sort of tank, and the Bundeswehr is receiving 123. They are additionally anticipated to be delivered shortly. In Europe, 18 nations already depend on the Leopard 2 predominant battle tank from KNDS Germany. The system has 23 consumer states worldwide.

In the presence of Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, the Norwegian Defense State Secretary Marte Gerhardsen and the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, the so-called roll-out of the KNDS methods Leopard 2 A8 and the self-propelled howitzer 2000 for the Bundeswehr and the Norwegian armed forces happened on the Munich website in November 2025.

At that point, the CEO of KNDS Germany, Ralf Ketzel, described the day as a “milestone for both the rapid and modern equipment of the Bundeswehr and for the good and close cooperation in Europe in the area of ​​land systems”. The roll-out reveals the trusting cooperation between Norway and Germany and is on the similar time the beginning of uniform European procurement, to which Lithuania, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have additionally joined.