Abrams Replacement

The Army started concepts for its "Abrams Replacement" in 2017. Officially the 1st generation M1A1 are planned to remain in service at least until 2021 and 2040 for the M1A2/A3. The Army’s Future Combat Systems XM1202 Mounted Combat System was not funded, and the M1A3 program was delayed due to budget restrictions. The Abrams is four decades old, and is in the process of being replaced as the design is tapped out on how much it can be modernized. Germany and France are already designing a new MBT. According to Mark Milley, the Army's Chief of Staff, the NGCV will eventually replace the Bradley, Stryker, and Abrams in U.S. service.

Kris Osborn, reported in Scout Warrior on March 2, 2017 that "The Army is now performing concept modeling and early design work for a new mobile, lethal, high-tech future lightweight tank platform able to detect and destroy a wider range of targets from farther distances, cross bridges, incinerate drones with lasers and destroy incoming enemy artillery fire – all for the 2030s and beyond. The new vehicle, now emerging purely in the concept phase, is based upon the reality that the current M1A2 SEP Abrams main battle tank can only be upgraded to a certain limited extent."

Other Abrams users like Australia, Egypt, Morroco, Iraq, the USMC, Saudi-Arabia, etc. all simply wait for the US Army to develop upgrades and then adopt parts of them. Only Kuwait (and that only last year) decided to fund a separate upgrade.

The M1A2 SEP v3 that is currently entering service uses last generation's sensors, despite current third generation thermal imaging technology being available for a decade and used in current tanks from China, Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine, Japan and South Korea. The M256 gun is nowadays only mediocre, the turbine always was a weakness, and armor protection is not ideal.

In August 2018 Army Contracting Command conducted "Abrams SEPv4 Market Survey" Solicitation Number: W56HZV17C0188-P000XX for the Abrams SEPv4 Program. No contract will be awarded from this announcement. This was not a Request for Proposal (RFP) or an announcement of a forthcoming solicitation, nor was it a request seeking contractors to be placed on a solicitation mailing list.

The purpose of this market survey questionnaire was to obtain information on industry capability to satisfy U.S. Army requirements for support of modernizing the Abrams Main Battle Tank. Support requirements include engineering, logistics, project management services, and total supply chain management to support integration of identified capabilities within the Tank. Other requirements include shipping, travel, hardware, and contractor manpower reporting.

PdM Abrams was considering integrating additional capabilities to those currently in progress under the ECP 1A effort. Technology such as target acquisition sensor enhancements, color camera sight, survivability improvements, and lethality improvements may be included in future upgrades. The office was seeking experience in designing/upgrading fire control systems for ground combat vehicles including but not limited to design/integration of primary sights, secondary sights, direct fire weapons, turret stabilization, weapon stabilization, laser technologies, fire control software, and electronic control boxes.

It was also interested in examples of experience with replacing or augmenting hard Direct View Optics (DVO) with a digital sight system, including but not limited to how you handle issues like video latency, resolution matching of existing DVO, and digital sight stabilization.

The Army is performing concept modeling and early design work for a new mobile, lethal, high-tech future lightweight tank platform able to detect and destroy a wider range of targets from farther distances, cross bridges, incinerate drones with lasers and destroy incoming enemy artillery fire – all for the 2030s and beyond. The new vehicle, now emerging purely in the concept phase, is based upon the reality that the current M1A2 SEP Abrams main battle tank can only be upgraded to a certain limited extent, senior Army officials explained.

The Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, or TARDEC, is immersed in the development of design concepts for various tank platforms. The extensive conceptual work, simulation and design modeling will be needed before there is any opportunity to “bend metal” and produce a new tank. The new tank will emerge after the Army first fields its M1A2 SEP v4 upgraded Abrams tank in the 2020s, a more lethal Abrams variant with 3rd Generation Forward Looking Infrared Sensors for greater targeting range and resolution and more lethal Advanced Multi-Purpose, or AMP ammunition combining many rounds into a single 120mm round. The AMP round will replace four tank rounds now in use. The first two are the M830, High Explosive Anti-Tank, or HEAT, round and the M830A1, Multi-Purpose Anti -Tank, or MPAT, round.

The SEP v4 variant, slated to being testing in 2021, will also include new laser rangefinder technology, color cameras, integrated on-board networks, new slip-rings, advanced meteorological sensors, ammunition data links and laser warning receivers.

A lighter weight, more high-tech tank will allow for greater mobility in the future, including an ability to deploy more quickly, handle extremely rigorous terrain, integrate new weapons, cross bridges inaccessible to current Abrams tanks and maximize on-board networking along with new size-weight-and-power configurations. Although initial requirements for the future tank have yet to emerge, the next-generation platform will use advanced sensors and light-weight composite armor materials able to achieve equal or greater protection at much lighter weights.

Some immediate changes and manufacturing techniques could easily save at least 20-percent of the weight of a current 80-ton Abrams. The idea is to engineer a tank that is not only much more advanced than the Abrams in terms of sensors, networking technology, force tracking systems, an ability to control nearby drones and vastly increased fire-power – but to build a vehicle with open-architecture such that it can quickly accommodate new technologies as they emerge.

For instance, the Abrams was first fielded with a 105mm cannon – yet built with a mind to potential future upgrades such that it could be configured to fire a 120mm gun. The vehicle needs to have physical adaptability and change and growth ability for alterations as one of its premises – so it can learn things about energy and power and armor. The Army needs to think about growth as an operational need. Humvees were not built for the growth necessary to respond to the fast-emerging and deadly threat of roadside bombs in Iraq.

The new tank will be specifically engineered with additional space for automotive systems, people and ammunition. As computer algorithms rapidly advance to allow for greater levels of autonomy, the Abrams tank will be able to control nearby drones using its own on-board command and control networking. Unmanned “wing-man” type drones could fortify attacking ground forces by firing weapons, testing enemy defenses, carrying suppliers or performing forward reconnaissance and reconnaissance missions while manned-crews remained back at safer distances.

Active protection systems are another instance of emerging technologies which will go on the latest state-of-the-art Abrams tanks and also quite likely be used for the new tank. Using computer algorithms, fire control technology, sensors and an interceptor of some kind, Active Protection Systems are engineered to detect, track and destroy incoming enemy fire in a matter of milliseconds. The Army is currently fast-tracking an effort to explore a number of different APS systems for the Abrams. General Dynamics Land Systems is, as part of the effort, using its own innovation to engineer an APS system which is not a “bolt-on” type of applique but something integrated more fully into the tank itself.

The use of space in the new vehicle, drawing upon a better allocation of size-weight-and-electrical power will enable the new tank to accommodate better weapons, be more fuel efficient and provide greater protection to the crew.

While advanced Abrams tanks will be using a mobile Auxiliary Power Unit to bring more on-board electrical power to the platform for increased targeting, command-and-control technologies and weapons support, mobile power is needed to sustain future systems such as laser weapons.

The Army cancelled its plans for a future Ground Combat Vehicle, largely for budget reasons, some of the innovations, technologies and weapons systems are informing this effort to engineer a new tank for the future. Design specs, engineering, weapons and other innovations envisioned for the GCV were analyzed for the new tank.

In particular, the new tank may use an emerging 30mm cannon weapon planned for the GCV – the ATK-built XM813. The XM813, according to Army developmental papers, is able to fire both armor-piercing rounds and air-burst rounds which detonate in the air in proximity to an enemy in defilade, hiding behind a rock or tree, for example. The computer-controlled and electronically driven weapon can fire up to 200 rounds per minute, uses a dual-recoil firing system and a semi-closed bolt firing mode, Army information says.

The new tank may use a lightweight 120mm cannon first developed years ago for the Army’s now-cancelled Future Combat Systems, or FCS; FCS worked on a series of “leap-ahead” technologies which, in many instances, continue to inform current Army modernization efforts. The FCS program developed next-generation sensors, networking, robots and a series of mobile, high-tech 27-ton Manned-Ground Vehicles, or MGVs.

The MGVs included a Non-Line-of-Sight artillery variant, Reconnaissance and Surveillance, Infantry, Medical and Command-and-Control variants, among others. One of the key vehicles in this planned future fleet was the Mounted Combat System, or MCS.

The overall MGV effort was cancelled by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2009 because Gates felt that the 27-ton common chassis was not sufficiently survivable enough in a modern IED-filled threat environment.

Although the MGVs were engineered with a so-called “survivability onion” of networked sensors and active protection systems to identify and destroy approaching enemy fire at great distances, many critics of FCS felt that the vehicles were not sufficient to withstand a wide range of enemy attacks should incoming fire penetrate sensors or hit targets in the event that the sensor malfunctioned or were jammed.

The Army’s MCS program developed and test-fired a super lightweight 120mm cannon, called the XM360, able to fire existing and emerging next-generation tank rounds. The lightweight weapon being developed for the MCS was two-tons, roughly one-half the weight of the existing Abrams 120mm cannon. The MCS was to have had a crew of two, a .50 caliber machine gun, and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher.

The Army’s Combat Vehicle Modernization Strategy specifically mentions the value of adapting the XM360 for future use. “Next-Generation Large Caliber Cannon Technology. The XM360 next-generation 120mm tank cannon integrated with the AAHS will provide the M1 Abrams a capability to fire the next generation of high-energy and smart-tank ammunition at beyond line-of-sight (LOS) ranges. The XM360 could also incorporate remote control operation technologies to allow its integration on autonomous vehicles and vehicles with reduced crew size. For lighter weight vehicles, recoil limitations are overcome by incorporating the larger caliber rarefaction wave gun technology while providing guided, stabilized LOS, course-corrected LOS, and beyond LOS accuracy”.

The MCS was test-fired at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., in 2009. The platform used an aluminum turret and three-man crew using an automatic loading system. Also, the MCS was engineered to fire 120mm rounds up to 10 kilometers, what’s called Beyond-Line-of-Sight using advanced fire control and targeting sensors, General Dynamics developers explained at the time. Special new technology was needed for the XM360 in order to allow a lighter-weight cannon and muzzle to accommodate the blast from a powerful 120mm tank round.

Elements of the XM360 include a combined thermal and environmental shroud, blast deflector, a composite-built overwrapped gun, tube-modular gun-mount, independent recoil brakes, gas-charged recuperators, and a multi-slug slide block breech with an electric actuator, Army MCS developmental documents describe.

A lighter-weight, more mobile and lethal tank platform will be necessary to adjust to a fast-changing modern threat environment including attacking RPGs, Anti-Tank-Guided Missiles and armor-piercing enemy tank rounds. Increased speed can be used as a survivability combat-enhancing tactic, adding that there are likely to be continued urban threats in the future as more populations migrates into cities.