Heavy Armor Lives: Army May Operate M1 Abrams Tank Through 2050

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington DC) Operating air and ground drones in the line of enemy fire, sending large robotic vehicles to clear tank ditches and breach obstacles and using long-range, high-fidelity sensors to maneuver and target enemies in more dispersed formations .. are all newer tactical mission possibilities now envisioned for the heavily armored Abrams main battle tank.

While an armored ability to bring massive fire power, unparalleled survivability and mechanized assault missions still very much characterizes the operational scope of Army tanks, there are some interesting ways in which technology, networking and unmanned systems are expanding its potential combat applications and therefore multiplying or enhancing its warfare impact.

Should there be a major force-on-force engagement with a technically advanced rival force, the Abrams appears to be the only major platform capable of the kind of massive, fire-power driven engagement any kind of combined-arms assault or counterattack might require. Yet, its combat utility is rapidly expanding due to upgrades and technologies expected to impact the tactical equation.

Today and tomorrow’s Abrams, as evidenced by the now arriving M1A2 SEPv3 and SEPv4 variants, are much more capable and different tanks than the platform has been in recent years. It has improved armor protections, a new generation of computing and command and control, modernized thermal, upgraded infrared targeting sensors enabling longer range, more widely scoped target identification and vastly expanded on-board electrical power through integrated mobile auxiliary power units.The v3 also operates with new dimensions of GPS connectivity, moving map displays, threat-based intelligence data, force tracking systems and an upgraded engine and transmission. 

The on-board computing and electronics are also intended to add the technical infrastructure for yet a new series of upgrades for the platform with the now emerging and underway v4 variant. This will bring 3rd-Gen Forward Looking Infrared sensors, a new generation of ammunition data links and an entirely new varied, adjustable and much more capable Multi-Purpose Round ammunition …. able to fire high-explosive anti-tank rounds, multi-purpose rounds and canister rounds intended to expand dispersed fragmentation for anti-personnel lethality. What much of this amounts to is that an Abrams tank is increasingly enabled to take on a much wider mission scope, in part to accommodate the kinds of changing threat environments it would likely face in an anticipated future engagement. What this means, among many things, is that the Abrams v3 and v4 are being engineered to perform both traditional tank combat operations as well as an entirely new sphere of needed warfare tactics. These tactical dynamics explain why the Army continues to refine new concepts of traditional Combined Arms Maneuver tailored to a new generation of threats.

M1A2 SEPv4 Arriving