Optionally Manned Tank: The U.S. Army’s future tank plan is here

Expect longer range sensing, better defenses and weapons, and an optional drone capability.

The Army plans to present senior service leaders with a series of specific “options” to pursue to engineer a new generation of main battle tanks to fight well into the coming decades, a move destined to incorporate key technical and

tactical parameters including new paradigms for sensing, weapons attack and warfare maneuver. The US Army is preparing to choose a path forward in 2023 as a first step toward building prototypes of the new tank, called the Optionally Manned Tank.

“We want to generate as many options as possible, so that leaders can make informed decisions when we talk about modernization. I believe we cannot modernize to parity, we must modernize to overmatch,” Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, Director, Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team, told The National Interest in an interview.

Given that future battlefields are expected to be more diverse and filled will new elements of multi-domain threats from sophisticated enemies armed with long-range precision weapons, it is not at all surprising that Army plans for its new tank are heavily focused upon new generations of “sensing” technologies and long-range attack weapons.

“We will need to increase situational awareness to fight a future vehicle in China or Russia. We must look at what our potential adversaries are investing in and what our capabilities will be. When you talk lethally, you have to have the ability to engage and destroy your adversaries at a range that is beyond what they are able to engage and destroy you,” Coffman said.

Maneuvering quickly, remaining undetected, sensing and attacking enemy targets across multiple domains at long distances, Coffman said, are all some of the necessary ingredients to surviving modern war.

“If you dissect the concept of survivability, it includes signature management and it includes height and mobility. How fast can this transition from movement to maneuver. Survive in the nastiest places in the world and fight and win. We will fight outnumbered, so you must possess the capability to fight outnumbered and achieve victory leveraging all domains,” he explained.

Weapons themselves are also naturally fundamental to survivability; they rely heavily upon accurate, high-resolution sensing, data aggregation and analysis for targeting and, as Coffman described it, having enough ammunition.

Source: nationalinterest.org

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