I worked for General Dynamics on the Abrams. They cost about 44 million. GD was continuously updating them to take care of obsolescence. But, they were careful not to do too good a job as they wanted to update them again in 5 years. The smallest assembly, with two relays a diode and a few resistors, costs out at $45,000. It’s the size of four packs of cigarettes. If you built it in your garage it would cost $100 and you’d be happy.
As to the tank itself, when Israel went into Lebanon, they lost an unknown (to us) but significant number of Murkavas. The Murkava was designed based on the M1A2 and is probably better in many respects. What killed it was every other Arab had a $10,000 shoulder launched, wire-guided missile. Nobody can afford that kind of uneconomic exchange. Israel has announced they’re taking all 1500 Murkavas out of action. They’re replacing them with something resembling an RPV VW bug.
The other problem is the tank’s logistics footprint. They have to be transported by ships and ships are vulnerable to any first-world power. They need a fleet of tankers following them and tankers can be taken out by RPVs.
The tank is the battleship of 1941. It is nice to have, but no longer effective or cost-effective. The Army needs to invest in RPV’s and AI weapons platforms. The tank is a dinosaur.
I will now duck as the flamethrowers open fire.
It will be hard to kill the tank as so many senators have a stake in it in their home states. But jobs are a poor reason to waste precious money on a platform we don’t need.
(We do need the F-22 as everybody who might fight us is fielding a similar plane. The F-15 is old and obsolete. If we went to a wartime operational tempo we’d quickly be out of planes.)
I get a lot out of your posts and appreciate them.
I was a mere lowly NG 19k years back on Abrams and appreciated the platform for what it could do even just doing NG ride arounds on the trails.