They have described it as, “the best killing system on the planet.” It could arrive 25 tons lighter, faster and with as much advanced capabilities as what the Army has now.Ĭoffman noted that China has an estimated 7,000 tanks and 3,000 infantry fighting vehicles in its arsenal now, far outnumbering the U.S. Russian officials have announced that they would field the T-14 Armata tank in 2022. To keep pace with new threats, from EW to drones and better anti-tank weapons, the Army is doing a years-long overhaul of nearly every part of the ABCT. While more units gives the force added options, the technology in most of the ABCT platforms is decades, sometimes more than half-a-century, old. When those conversions concluded, the Army had 11 ABCTs in the active forces and five ABCTs in the Army National Guard. So, when even one BCT is converted, it’s significant. Recovering armor assets has taken years after conversions in the opposite direction during the early 2000s, when armored forces gave way to Stryker or infantry teams tailored for Iraq and Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool) New Russian Armata tanks roll during the Victory Parade marking the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, May 9, 2015. That followed the conversion of an Infantry BCT to an ABCT the previous year. In 2018, the Army announced it was converting a Stryker Brigade Combat Team to an ABCT. That means more than adding new equipment, but also training and adjusting tactics.

Those ABCTs on rotations to Korea, Europe and the Middle East, are also in the midst of major modernization. In 2020, McConville said he worried about ops tempo in general, but he specifically pointed to air defense artillery and ABCTs as his top concerns. While high operational tempo within special operations is often at the top of the headlines, air defense and armored units have also been frequently tapped across the globe in recent years. Army, particularly the armored force, you’ve made the decision,” Coffman said. “Combined arms maneuver is how we will be decisive, how we will clear and hold land.”

“If you want to take land, if you want to hold land, if you want to clear land, you need the ground element,” Coffman said. At the center of that maneuver, Coffman noted, is the armored force, providing mobile, protected, accurate, lethal fires in high volume.

Wat is the modern tank used by the US