Future of Main Battle Tank Looks Secure

M1A1 conducts reconnaissance in Iraq in September 2004.

U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo

Feb 3, 2011 By Paul McLeary, Andy Nativi, David Eshel / AviationWeek.com

The decision late last year by the U.S. Marine Corps to send a tank platoon to Afghanistan was criticized by some analysts, who rejected the idea that M1A1 Abrams tanks could be useful in a counterinsurgency (COIN) environment. But for all the talk in recent years of the civilian population representing a center of gravity in COIN operations, and the corresponding need to cut back on air strikes, long-range artillery fires and other initiatives, one aspect of COIN has often been ignored—even with the outreach, local alliance-building and efforts to spare civilians from the ravages of war, the need remains to kill the enemy. As such, what the Marines are doing in southern Afghanistan with a platoon of tanks is hardly unusual. Main battle tanks (MBT) have been used successfully by the Canadians and the Dutch in southern Afghanistan, and by the Israelis, who learned hard lessons from bitter fighting in Lebanon in 2006, and went in heavy in Gaza in 2008-09. Rand Corp.’s David Johnson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who writes about heavy armor in conventional and irregular operations, and is finishing a book about Israel’s experience in Lebanon and Gaza, says Israeli officials tell him they’ve learned that if they don’t go into urban and asymmetric combat heavy, they won’t survive. “When they came out of Lebanon they restarted the Merkava Mk4 tank line to start building the Namer,” an armored personnel carrier based on a Merkava chassis, he says.