>>... paying 2% of their budgets for US made weapons.
Or their own, or French, S. Korean, German, Japanese, UK, Swedish, or... NATO standard systems are made by a lot of countries. Some of the best don't come from the US (e.g. Swedish Griffin, S. Korean Black Panther)
Yep, you can add effective armor, aiming systems - but it shoots rounds that don't do much against even the T-72, nevermind something less archaic. Anyway, the RF doesn't have the capacity to upgrade them at scale, can't build or buy modern aiming systems, so they're going to get fielded as-is.
That said, it's a function of the warfighting doctrine the RF uses. The 54/5 is probably fine for infantry support, so long as there are no opposing tracked systems, Javelins, TOWs, etc.
BTW the M1A1, Leopard (both 1 & 2) and Challenger are NBC capable. I think all the modern IFVs as well.
One question: how does the RF plan on keeping the CCP from grabbing back territories they lost through what they're calling 'unequal treaties'? Maybe they'll ask nicely...