Posted on 05/06/2025 5:29:39 PM PDT by Apparatchik
Key Points: The US Army's M10 Booker armored vehicle program is criticized as a prime example of a flawed requirements process.
-Initially intended as a lightweight, C-130 airdroppable "light tank" to support airborne and light infantry units, successive requirement additions ("creep") resulted in a 42-ton vehicle too heavy for airdrop and even some base infrastructure, like bridges at Fort Campbell.
-Despite failing its original key criteria, the airdrop requirement was dropped, and the program continued.
-Critics argue the Army now fields a vehicle lacking its intended mission and unique deployability, representing bureaucratic inertia over battlefield need.
-The M10 Booker has now been cancelled.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Take that, Putin!!!! We don’t need no tank to defeat you!!!!
Good. It was a tank that nobody wanted and was dead meat on a battlefield. In this day of drones, a tank isn’t going to last.
Surely the defense contractors and members of congress already got their taste.
42 tons “light”.
Good. Tank warfare is going the way of the dodo. When a 500 dollar drone and warhead can distroy a 12M dollar tank.....
“Good. It was a tank that nobody wanted and was dead meat on a battlefield. In this day of drones, a tank isn’t going to last.”
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If nothing else, the Russia/Ukraine war has shown the sunset of most armor, certainly in massed formations. When a thousand-dollar drone can neutralize a tank, it’s time for new doctrine.
Same weight as an M-4 Sherman.
We don’t need tanks. We need drones.
find out who pushed the original design and who pushed the original funding...
The time of the armored coffin is long past.
A Delaware entity --. But here is the NSJ in their own information and with the proud photo they publish on their About Page:
National Security Journal's "About US" web pageSurely Freepers will greet the National Security Journal 'news' with the same sort of smiling Delaware pride.....National Security Journal Inc.
800 N King Street Suite 304
Wilmington, DE 19801
Do we still use the EM 50 ?
-Initially intended as a lightweight, C-130 airdroppable “light tank” to support airborne and light infantry units, successive requirement additions (”creep”) resulted in a 42-ton vehicle too heavy for airdrop and even some base infrastructure, like bridges at Fort Campbell.
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“Engineering Change Requests”. Make me want to kill the little bastards after the third or fourth change, but can’t do that.
Best cure - Find them in a very public place with lots of witnesses, drop what’s been done so far in front of them, and tell them “Call me when you decide what you want”, turn around and walk away. Don’t yell, just tell them so others hear clearly.
One of them wouldn’t talk to me for two years.
I delivered when nobody else could and I trained the guys who were reasonable so they could take care of the problem by themselves next time. They were happy with me, and so was the range manager.
Actually a Very Fun job - best job I ever had. Did it for 39 years.
And swarms of them.
The destruction of heavy armor in the fighting inside Ukraine shows you that light armor has no chance of being able to survive. That’s what killed the M-10.
I agree with other posters in that drones are making tanks obsolete.
Back in my military days I wanted nothing to do with tanks or ships simply because they were (and still are) death traps. The more sophisticated warfare gets, the deadly these death traps get.
Something like 80 M10 Booker tanks have already been produced. Maybe they could be placed on the Zumwalt-class destroyers. I say that because I’ve read that the ammunition for the main guns on the Zumwalt destroyers are too expensive to actually use.
So replace those guns with M10 Booker tanks.
See? When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
We had an “air-droppable” light tank, the Sheridan, back in the 70s. As the saying went, it “was air-droppable—once.” It was “swimmable” too, as I recall, but mostly a costly boondoggle.
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