After a year and a half since the Army took delivery on the first of its souped-up new version of the M1 Abrams main battle tank, the Pentagon's Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio is ramping up to deliver the service's first full brigade of upgraded warhorses to bring the pain downrange.
The Army is on track to receive its first prototypes of the upgraded M1A2 Abrams tank by the end of September, the branch’s PEO Ground Combat Systems office told Scout Warrior on Sept. 14, with plans to start fielding the souped-up new model downrange by fiscal year 2020.
Moscow will build 100 T-14 Armata main battle tanks by 2020 according to a senior Russian defense official, putting to rest the fanciful notion that the Kremlin would build a fleet of 2,300 of fearsome new machines by that time.
Russia’s next-generation battle tank can reportedly out-stick the American armor in a heartbeat — and it’s coming to battlefields sooner than expected.
