By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
(Washington DC)
Deploying quickly into the warzone from a C-17, adding supportive fire to fast-moving infantry under attack and control forward attack and reconnaissance drones .. are just a few of the many missions the Army intends for its newly named M10 Booker armored combat vehicle. The new armored vehicle is designed for modern “expeditionary war,” so will cross bridges, close to contact with an enemy, provide lethal supportive fires and quickly navigate through narrowly configured urban areas.
Armed with a 105mm cannon and some of the best available technologies, the new M10 Booker or former Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle has blasted onto the scene toward production and combat service with the Army. Next step is to enter full production and fire weapons at the vehicle to ensure it is fully “combat ready.”
M10 Booker
Army weapons developers will soon be firing RPGs, anti-armor missiles and small arms fire at its newly unveiled M10 Booker Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle. (photo. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville & Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston at A10 Booker Unveiling)
“The live fire testing will include armor coupons and ballistic hulls. We will shoot vehicle’s with a wide range of threats and achieve accuracy,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, Program Executive Officer, Ground Combat Systems, said just prior to the M10 Booker unveiling.
The Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle, not M10 Booker, has been in development for many years as a lighter-weight alternative to a 70-ton Abrams tank able to transit with and support maneuvering infantry brigade combat teams in high-speed, expeditionary combat operations. While called the Mobile Protected Firepower for years, the vehicle was officially unveiled and named the M10-Booker by Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville at the Army’s 248th birthday celebration June 10, 2023 at Fort Belvoir, Va.
The choice of the name “Booker” for the vehicle contains a unique and particular significance, as the vehicle is named after two heroic American soldiers killed in combat, Pvt. Robert Booker from WWII and Staff. Sgt. Stevon Booker from OIF. Their stories are remarkable and aligned with the timeless spirit of selfless devotion known to inspire thousands of US Army soldiers. Pvt. Robert Booker advanced across hundreds of yards of open territory to attack Nazi machine gun and mortar positions. After destroying a German machine gun position, Booker was fatally wounded by incoming Nazi fire, yet he continued to direct and inspire fellow soldiers to follow his attack as he took his final breaths. Booker received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military honor.
Staff. Sgt Stevon Booker was a non-commissioned officer in charge of an armor task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom. While leading an armor unit in the famous US Army attacks on the Baghdad airport, Stevon Bookers armored vehicle formation came under deadly ambush by Iraqi forces firing RPGs and small arms fire. Booker reportedly exited the vehicle and stretched out on top of the turret to direct responsive fire and protect fellow soldiers vulnerable to the Iraqi attacks. The M10 Booker vehicle is therefore named in honor of both Robert and Stevon Booker for their combat service.
The selfless resolve to confront danger and death in service of others, such as that shown by both Robert and Stevon Booker, aligns with inspirational words spoken in 1899 by former US President Theodore Roosevelt when he served as Governor of New York just before being elected and serving as President in 1901. The speech, famously called “The Strenuous Life,” was delivered in Chicago at a men’s club on April 10, 1989 in the context of ongoing military conflict in the Spanish-American war. Roosevelt was, among other things, discussing the US commitments to the liberation of The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico from Spanish colonial rule during the Spanish-American war. Famously, the text of the speech equates “success” with a willingness to work, sacrifice and not “shrink” from danger.
“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that the highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peach, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”… Theodore Roosevelt, April 10, 1989.
Roosevelt mirrored this intensity in his own life, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Mckinley. Having studied and written about the US Navy’s war tactics in the War of 1812 while at Harvard, Roosevelt helped plan the successful Naval war against Spain and himself fought the Spanish Army in Cuba. Roosevelt was also an intense athlete who trained and competed as a boxer for years, even continuing into his Presidency.
While spoken more than 100-years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, and roughly 50-years before WWII. Roosevelt’s words and life actions speak to the intensity and service with which both Robert and Stevon booker served their country.
“Booker” Soldiers & M10 Booker Armored Vehicle
Heroic actions in armored warfare such as those inspiring the vehicle’s M10 “Booker” name, are aligned with the intended operational function of the combat vehicle. While there is unquestionably a continued place in mechanized warfare for heavy armor platforms such as the 70-ton Abrams tank, the Army developed what is now the M10 Booker to engineer a highly lethal, yet expeditionary, deployable armored combat vehicle able to keep pace with and support dismounted Infantry Brigade Combat Teams. While of course critical to armored warfare, the Abrams tank is not only extremely difficult to deploy but also challenged by mobility limitations. Due to its weight, an Abrams is simply unable to cross many bridges or operate in narrowly configured urban areas.
The M10-Booker, however, brings 105mm cannon lethality to armored warfare but moves faster, operates at 38-tons and is quickly deployable on a C-17. M10 Booker weapons developers sought to identify an optimal blend between deployability, speed, lethality and survivability sufficient to meet the changing threat landscape of future warfare.
In a recent meeting with reporters, McConville explained some of the key concepts of operation which continue to inform the development of the M10 Booker, a platform designed to help propel Army tactics and expeditionary warfare capability well into the 2040s. McConville talked about the Army’s current 2040 modernization effort in the context of the M10 Booker, explaining the ultimate goal as a sought after synergy between concepts emerging from Ukraine, ongoing weapons development and training with multi-domain task forces to prepare for anticipated future warfare operations.
The M10 Booker, for example, is light, fast and deployable but much more survivable than the Russian 2S25 Strut “light tank.” In service since 2005, the Strut i
s described as an amphibious tank destroyer designed to combine tank-like firepower with combat maneuverability – much like the US Army MPF. However, the Strut is only 18-tons, and the US M10-Booker is much more survivable at 38-tons. Army developers have sought to develop a new vehicle optimized with an improved blend of protection, armored firefight ability as well as unprecedented mobility for a vehicle of its kind.
Weapons developers with General Dynamics Land Systems, who build the M10 Booker, say that the suspension of the vehicle, the high horsepower weight to horsepower ratio and front-mounted diesel engine make its architecture quite different from a standard tank. Not only that, while an Abrams can only fire a 120mm cannon, the MPF is built with a modular turret such that it can switch out to a heavier cannon than a 105mm if needed to meet certain mission requirements. The MPF is also built with a newly designed “slip ring” for added networking, data management and information exchange between the hull and the turret.
The M10 Booker is being accelerated to war, in part to meet a pressing need for mobile firepower to support rapidly advancing light infantry. In recent years, Army assessments have found that Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) lack the maneuverable firepower needed to destroy fortified enemy positions, bunkers, light armored vehicles and heavy machine gun positions.
A Congressional Research Report from October of 2018 reached a similar conclusion, explaining that current infantry lacks the requisite attack and mobility requirements.
“The IBCT lacks the ability to decisively close with and destroy the enemy under restricted terrains such as mountains, littorals, jungles, subterranean areas, and urban areas,” the CRS report states.
The vision for the M10 Booker aligns with concepts articulated in an essay by West Point’s Modern War Institute’s titled “Light, Mobile and Many: Rethinking the Future of Armor.” The essay suggests that heavily-armed, yet faster, lighter-weight vehicles may take center-stage when it comes to modern threats and future combat strategies.
“If smaller, more dispersed platforms, with more sister platforms covering each vehicle’s flanks, is more capable of surviving the battlefield of tomorrow than the gigantic Abrams of today, again the solution is straightforward,” The Modern War Institute states in its essay. War planners repeatedly emphasize that future war will be more disaggregated, driven by long-range sensors, unmanned systems and precision weapons with much farther reach.
This is not to say there will not be a continued place for heavy armor in future Army warfare, as the Abrams tank may remain a vital part of the Army’s arsenal for decades to come. Yet modern threat environments, coupled with advances in weapons and sensor ranges, AI-enabled multi-domain networking and the need for expeditionary, high op-tempo operations have all been driving the Army’s need for the M10 Booker.
Kris Osborn is the Military Affairs Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
