What can be said about the above (Leopard prices "bite")?

 

Tanks are losing their relevance not only due to vulnerability to drones but also because of their irrational overcomplication and rising production costs (€25 million for a Leopard 2A8), which make mass procurement unfeasible.
Moreover, for €25 million, you get a product that can only perform its tasks if protected from drones by collective defense systems, as neither electronic warfare (EW) nor active protection systems (APS) guarantee protection or can be overwhelmed by cheap, low-cost drones, especially as these will soon incorporate "artificial intelligence" capable of autonomously targeting.
So far, no tank-developing country has found answers to this. It can also be assumed that there’s little desire to address it, as the solution lies in the opposite direction: reducing costs and increasing mass production, moving away from anti-tank focus, maximizing simplification, adopting commercially available solutions, abandoning the "competition" of gun lengths and armor thickness, and reducing weight to a reasonable ~40 tons.
A new tank ideology will define layout solutions based on prioritizing the tank’s systems by their contribution to survivability, as described by Morozov and Mazurenko (see below), and moving away from the old ideology of differentiated armor focused on frontal protection. All-aspect protection should counter the most common drone-delivered threats, while frontal protection can be achieved through layout solutions like armor->fuel as filler->engine->crew...

Based on development experience from the second half of the last century to the present, it’s clear that this cannot be achieved within a turreted layout (whether manned or unmanned). Those who break free from the templates and rules of the "competition" in armor size and gun caliber will win the race for the next-generation tank. The Chinese are already taking steps in this direction, but their development began before the drone era and still leans toward old templates.
See: WAYS TO INCREASE TANK SURVIVABILITY (https://btvt.info/5library/vbtt_1987_02_morozov_tank.htm)