By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior
As a famous descendent of the 1950s-era M48 Patton main battle tank, the second generation M60 tank served as a key foundation of the US Army’s Cold War deterrence posture and fought all the way through the Gulf War in the 1990s before retiring in 1997.
M60 Cold War Powerhouse
Given this distinguished history, the M60 and its upgraded M60A3 variant operated as America’s “primary” main battle tank for decades, and a formidable force of 15,000 M60s were ultimately built before production ended in 1983. Despite the end of production, thousands of M60s were converted to upgraded M60A3 tanks and used in the Desert Storm in the early 90s. The size of the US Army’s M60 fleet of tanks seems to have sustained the service’s need to project land war “mass” in offensive armored maneuver formations.
It comes as little surprise that M60 production ended around the same time the famous M1 Abrams tank began to emerge, yet the tank was referred for its 105mm gun and fully-tracked armored propulsion system. An interesting 1984 text by Richard Hunnicutt called “Patton. A History of the Main Battle Tank.” traces the technological evolution of the Patton tank and M60 by discussing its design and describing its role in both the Korean War and Vietnam War. Hinnicutt says the M48 and M60 were developed to replace the M47 Patton and the M4 Sherman.
In its time the M60 was credited for exceptional combat performance in the 1973 Yom Kippur War where its out-performed Soviet T-62 main battle tanks. This was a substantial and extremely important combat success given the sheer ground force “size” advantage the Soviet Red Army sustained over the US for decades during the Cold War. The Israelis also used the M60 in the 1983 Lebanon War, where itwas equipped with explosive reactive armor.
M60 vs T-72
Perhaps of greatest significance, the M60s also performed well against Soviet-Era T-72 tanks during the Gulf War as well and the platform supported many militaries around the world well into the 1990s, including Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. With a spacious chassis, the M60 was extensively upgradable, meaning it was likely able to accommodate technological advances in targeting, fire power, computing and electronics.
It seems fair and quite reasonable to posit that the US Army’s experience with the M60 heavily influenced the engineering, configuration and weapons systems initially built into the Abrams tank in the 1980s.
The modernization elements of the M60 may well have offered a roadmap to a degree for the decades of modernization and upgrades the US Army performed on its 1980s Abrams tank. Today’s Abrams, such as the modern and now deployed M1A2 SEP (v)3 is almost an entirely different platform than the first Abrams that emerged decades earlier. For example, today’s Abrams operates with a 3rd Generation FLIR or Forward-Looking Infrared thermal sensor able to detect the heat signature of enemy tanks and destroy them from stand-off distances where it is not seen itself. This ability to target from stand-off range was demonstrated with great success by Abrams tanks during the Gulf War in famous tank battles against Iraqi T-72s.
Upgraded variants of the M60 are now serving with Taiwanese ground forces.
Kris Osborn is the 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.
