M1-Abrams: The Special Tank Ever Built

            The M1 Abrams main battle tank has been the mainstay of the U.S. Army’s armor branch for more than thirty years. Heavily armored, powered by a gas turbine engine and equipped with a powerful 120-millimeter gun, the M1 has proven an adaptable tank capable of fighting from the rolling hills of southern Germany to the deserts of Iraq. And yet the tank appeared to be a failure at first, caught in a tug-of-war of competing, varied interests that threatened to sink the project completely.


            In the late 1960s, the U.S. Army began the search for a new main battle tank. The M48/M60 series of tanks had reached a design dead end, and the Army desired a clean-sheet design to incorporate new technologies, including a gun-fired antitank missile. The Pentagon initially tried to cooperate with West Germany on a new tank, MBT-70, but the project was sunk by technical problems and cost overruns.

            The development of the M1 Abrams is a classic study into how competing requirements can collide with one another. The trifecta of tank power, firepower, protection and mobility all required some level of compromise. The Army was willing to bend some requirements, particularly with regards to weight, to get a good tank instead of being unbending in a vain search for the perfect tank. The result is the most battle-tested main battle tank today, a tank that, with periodic upgrades, has stood the test of time.

          Since then the Abrams has been involved in a lot more war, and it has had to forsake its invincible reputation. During the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, several were knocked out by massive IEDs or RPGs in the vulnerable rear armor, others by advanced Russian-made anti-tank missiles such as the AT-14 Kornet. In the ongoing conflicts in Yemen and Iraq, dozens of Saudi and Iraqi Abrams have been taken out by such missiles.

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