The Army is hoping to have a design for replacing the aging Abrams main battle tank soon. I'm just hoping the Army chooses an actual tank.
Three sizes are on offer with the Army trying to figure out which one is just right:
A smaller vehicle could retain a large gun, but carry less ammunition. It would also be lighter, allowing it to be carried by aircraft such as the C-17 Globemaster III, and substitute traditional heavy tank armor for an active protection system.
A medium-sized vehicle would be in the weight class of the M1A2 Abrams, while a large vehicle would be even bigger, retaining heavy armor to shrug off enemy anti-tank gun rounds and missiles but at the expense of strategic mobility. The medium and large tanks would be about the same width, in order to fit on railroad cars.
Eighteen years ago in Military Review (starting on page 28) I was skeptical that the Army could design a tank Future Combat System capable of being strategically deployable in numbers and still be lethal and survivable.
A lighter tank could be useful if it is intended to provide more and more easily replaced tanks. I think that replacing passive armor with active protections, rather than supplementing the passive armor, is vulnerable to work-arounds. [And sorry, sometimes I'm horrified at how long my early blog paragraphs were.]
If the purpose of choosing a light model is to airlift them, give up on that fantasy. Only small numbers can be airlifted overseas from the continental United States faster than ships can move them. If memory serves me, once you get up to a full brigade for a Stryker brigade it's a toss up as to whether air or sea travel is faster. And that's if the Air Force doesn't have higher priorities for always-scarce heavy airlift.
A heavy tank is probably insane unless bridging equipment in our engineers is up to the task. Let's not even speculate on whether civilian bridges in our allies'--let alone enemies'-- territory will be upgraded to handle them.
So "medium" on the order of our already heavy Abrams is probably the only other real option.
What will it be? Will the Army choose another Abrams secure in the knowledge that active protection systems will make the expensive tank survivable? Or will the Army seek a new Sherman tank that is lethal enough but not terribly survivable--but able to be mass produced?
Would it be too much to ask to build the medium tank, but with options built in to strip the design of much of its armor and gadgets to make it a simpler and lighter tank in case of a long war of attrition against a peer nation requires mass production?
UPDATE: Is upgrading the M-1 the best option for the next tank? Maybe. But doesn't the basic platform run into limits for upgrading before too long?
