What comes After the Abrams? Assistant Secretary of Army Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Talks Future of Tanks

*This video is being republished for viewer interest.

By Kris Osborn - President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Partial transcript below:

Kris Osborn I think it was a year ago, I spoke with General Kaufman about the optionally man tank. And if I recall, one of the things he said was that there's conceptual work going on that there isn't really a specific path chosen yet. But there is a marker in 2023, when the army might navigate, if you will, a path toward what to do with either manned unmanned, and I have this tank here, which I gave my son for Christmas when he was five. And I have to think about the role of how heavy armored and what are some of the thinking about this optionally manned tank, what comes after the Abrams.

Douglas Bush So I think that's still a requirements discussion that's going on, kind of on the uniform side of the Army, where they're working through kind of the concepts, and then the potential requirements for either a tank with fewer people in it, or tank with maybe no people. But those are very early discussions. And I think we're still in the concept stage.

I think I think the army needs to take its time to get that one, right. I think we're starting otherwise, though. It's not like we're not doing robotics. So we have a lot of great robotics programs going on, starting small. And then once we start with those, we're going to add capability to them, possibly at some point weapons. And so I think the evolution of robotics, broadly speaking, is happening now, when we can get to a full tank size vehicle that is unmanned, I think that's still an open question. But I think people are working on answering the right questions you need to before you would start such a program.

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Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven - Center for Military Modernization and the Defense Editor for the National Interest. 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.