Army Makes Massive $4 Billion Tank Buy

Video Above: Northrop Grumman & Eastern Shipbuilding Group Build New Coast Guard OffShore Patrol Cutter

By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

(Washington D.C.) The Army is making a massive, $4.62 billion buy of the emerging, upgraded variant of the Abrams tank, signaling continued confidence in the value of heavy armor and bringing a wide sphere of new combat attack-enhancing technologies.

The concept with the M1A2SEPv3 Abrams variant is to bring new technologies, firepower, computing, high-fidelity sensing and survivability systems to the decades-old platform, to essentially re-engineer it in some ways into a new tank. The current upgraded Abrams, for instance, is much different in terms of combat performance than the original tank which first emerged in the 1980s.

The Army deal is with General Dynamics Land Systems, could wind up leading to the acquisition of as many as several hundred massively upgraded tanks. Earlier in its developmental life, the M1A2SEPv3 was referred to as the Army’s Engineering Change Proposal 1, wherein existing Abrams tanks were given new on-board electrical systems, auxiliary electrical power units, new armor materials, upgraded engines and transmissions and a 28-volt upgraded drive system, among other things.

Part of the electronic upgrades include the integration of something called the Auxiliary Power Unit, a new system engineered to support much greater levels of computing, electronics, and on-board reconnaissance and surveillance sensors such as next-generation Forward Looking Infrared targeting systems. Additional electronics can help power up other elements of the M1A2SEPv3, including a new generation of digital moving maps, force location data and GPS-enabled navigation.

These enhancements not only incorporate faster computer processing speeds but also greatly reduce latency, shortening image and data refresh time through additional electrical power and higher-bandwidth, faster satellite connectivity.