During the EDEX 2025 international arms exhibition in Egypt, Belgian company John Cockerill Defense showed a modification variant for quite old M60 tanks, which began production back in 1960, meaning over 65 years ago.
Specifically, we're talking about replacing the original M60 turret with the new Cockerill 3105. Thanks to such integration, these tanks should essentially get a second life, as the original armament and fire control systems are already somewhat outdated.
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The Cockerill 3105 turret is equipped with a modern fire control system that allows detecting targets at a distance of 18 km and identifying them at 5 km distance in daytime mode, and detecting targets at 15 km distance and identifying them at 3.5 km distance in thermal imaging mode.
Cockerill 3105 armament includes a 105mm Cockerill HP gun, as well as a 7.62mm, 12.7mm machine gun, or 40mm automatic grenade launcher to choose from. Besides regular shells, anti-tank missiles can also be launched from the gun.
An important advantage, as well as somewhat a disadvantage, is the presence of an autoloader in Cockerill 3105, which holds 12-16 rounds, which may not be enough during intense combat. But it allows reducing crew from the standard four people to three.
Regarding armor protection, Cockerill 3105 declares up to level 5 STANAG 4569, which protects it from 25mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot rounds. And of course it loses in this parameter to the standard turret with full anti-projectile armor with a maximum of 180mm.
But instead, thanks to installing the new turret, the tank's overall weight should drop by as much as 7-10 tons, which should significantly affect mobility capabilities. That is, overall, installing Cockerill 3105 will make the M60 an accurate, more mobile sniper.
If we consider which countries such a modification might interest, there's indeed a large list of countries whose arsenals still have hundreds of M60s. Specifically:
- Bahrain - 50 M60A3
- Taiwan - 200 M60A3
- Egypt - 300 M60A1 and 850 M60A3
- Morocco - 220 M60A1 and 120 M60A3
- Thailand - 53 M60A1 and 125 M60A3
- Turkeyi - 100 M60A1, 650 M60A3 TTS and M60TM Firat
- Saudi Arabia - 370 M60A3
- Greece - 157 M60A3
- Bosnia and Herzegovina - 45 M60A3
- Brazil - 31 M60A3 TTS
This list doesn't include countries like iran and Yemen, because obviously even if they wanted to, such a contract cannot be concluded.
Overall, M60 modernization by installing Cockerill 3105 is far from the first case of integrating this turret on various chassis, APCs, IFVs, and tanks. The company has previously modernized, for example,Leopard 1, which was transferred to Ukraine for testing this year.
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