All of the cameras, the counter-drone systems, the gunnery and so on will evolve based on the best commercially available tech.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cSo now Col. Howell and the acquisition team can update our tank in days and weeks on the software side, rather than us taking a year,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
The vehicle itself is made of commercial parts: a Caterpillar engine,\u00a0SAPA transmission<\/a>, and a Roush race car cockpit with embroidered\u00a0Recaro<\/a>\u00a0seats.<\/p>\n It sounds pretty fancy for the Army, but it turns out that using all of these commercial products to build the new tank cut down significantly on the price tag.<\/p>\n \u201cI won’t give you the exact dollar figure, but they can produce them at 10-percent the cost\u2014with the embroidery,\u201d Howell said of the luxe seating.<\/p>\n The M1E3 is the biggest program yet developed under the Army\u2019s new\u00a0Continuous Transformation<\/a>\u00a0acquisitions model, which eschews exquisite, bespoke systems that take decades to develop and lock the Army into the hardware, software and the company that builds them.<\/p>\n Instead, the Army has ordered four of the prototypes from Roush, who in their partnership with General Dynamics used the existing Abrams specs to build the vehicle\u2019s skeleton. General Dynamics will take the lead on the next round of test vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think it would be, you know, a vendor comes and says, \u2018Hey, I’ve got something that’s better for active protection. There’s a better engine, there’s a lighter transmission to meet those specs.\u2019 They could, you know, plug in and play in that,\u201d Gen. Randy George, the Army\u2019s chief of staff, told reporters.<\/p>\n Those specs include a total weight one-quarter less than today\u2019s 70-plus-ton Abrams. It also has a hybrid-electric engine that sips half the fuel while delivering a top speed of about 40 mph.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it doesn’t have a fast quarter-mile time, but it can knock out a target at a quarter-mile in about a tenth of a second. You know, shoot an apple off a fence at 3-plus kilometers,\u201d George said. \u201cYou can kill drones, do the kinds of things that we would expect of a system like that out there, and you could put it anywhere in the world to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Army has also spent a lot less money than usual before getting it into soldiers\u2019 hands. About $75 million bought the research and deent, the software architecture inside the tank, and the first production models.<\/p>\n The service has asked for more than $700 million in this year\u2019s budget to start expanding the work. It will take a couple years to get enough built to start sending them out to every tank unit, but the Army was originally planning that it wouldn\u2019t even have soldiers testing them until 2031.<\/p>\n With that initial feedback expected to start coming in this summer, officials are comfortable taking the resources they would have spent on finding the perfect sensors and sights and radios before testing and spending it on the back end, to continuously upgrade the M1E3 as soldiers test it in the field.<\/p>\n And George hopes to be able to repeat this success with its forthcoming M2 Bradley replacement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s one of our goals that we’re back here next year, and sitting in the same room having the same discussion with an\u00a0XM-30<\/a>\u00a0that\u2019s down there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n