“Makes one wonder what the other tank was doing in the impact/zone.”
And if they were indeed shooting wooden practice targets you’d think that they were using training rounds rather than Sabot.
Article says training rounds were used or everyone in the impacted tank would be dead. Rounds weren’t explosive.
I was an Abrams platoon leader almost (gulp) 30 years ago, so some of what I'm saying may be a little dated. The 120mm in the Abrams has two primary rounds, HEAT (High explosive anti-tank) and sabot. HEAT is a much heavier round that inflicts damage by explosive force. SABOT is essentially a dart that damages by penetration at extreme high velocity. A HEAT training round is inert, but is essentially a flying cinder block. The service (war time) sabot is made of depleted uranium (and prior versions, tungsten) and are fin stabilized (the 120mm on the Abrams is a smoothbore). The target practice sabot is cone stabilized and made of machined aluminum. The use of a cone structure to stabilize as well as the use of a lighter metal allows the target practice sabot round to closely replicate the velocity and trajectory of a service sabot round out to normal engagement ranges (2-3 km), after which velocity and trajectory drop off much more quickly than a service round.
Out at NTC at Fort Irwin one very basic technique was used to provide accidents of the type described. The thermal sights of the Abrams have both a black hot and white hot setting, depending on how the gunner wants hot targets to appear. In White Hot, objects hotter than the background appear lighter ("whiter") and "Black Hot" is basically a negative image in which hotter objects appear darker. At NTC, they put cooling blankets on the target (basically blankets of gel similar to the blue icepacks people put in their coolers) to supercool the targets. A gunner would set his thermals on Black Hot and the target panels would glow white against the background, while the real vehicles in his unit would go dark/black. Not sure why something similar wasn't being used at Bliss.
The only incident I saw at NTC during several rotations out there was an overzealous observer/controller got his M113 out in front of the firing line and it was struck by a petal from a discarding sabot training round that went over his head. Could have been lethal, and put a dent in the 113.