The U.S. Army wants a new vehicle that would be lightly protected, but capable of going places the M1 Abrams main battle tank can't go while packing enough firepower to kill armored vehicles much larger than itself. Now Army leaders are meeting with defense contractors to put a plan in motion.

Three Tiers

Generally speaking, there are three types of tanks: heavy, medium, and light. All evolved to fulfill a certain role. Heavy tanks were useful against bunkers and fortifications, as well as dominating smaller tanks on the battlefield. Medium tanks are the mainstay of any tank force, a middleweight compromise between firepower, protection, and mobility. Light tanks were meant for scouting and exploiting breakthroughs, and handling infantry and light armored vehicles.

Note two of these types are in the past tense. Heavy and light tanks have largely disappeared from armies—heavy tanks because they're too slow and expensive, and light tanks because they became too easy to kill on the battlefield. In a world where a single soldier armed with a guided missile can disable a 70-ton tank, there isn't much room for a 30-ton variety.

In addition, recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have prioritized light infantry power above tank power. Yet as China and Russia—both of whom maintain large mechanized armies—act more and more aggressively on the global stage, the American Army has decided it needs an armored vehicle that can go where the action is. The Army would love to send the mainstay of the U.S. Armored Corps, the M1 Abrams , everywhere. Unfortunately, the Abrams has a couple of mobility problems: 12 feet wide and weighing 70 tons, the venerable vehilce has difficulty with restrictive terrain like jungles and mountains. Also, a C-17 transport plane can lift only two M1s at once, and the tank won't fit in the C-130 Hercules at all. So, according to Breaking Defense, the army is now meeting with leaders in the armored vehicle industry to create a next-generation vehicle.

The Stryker-based M1128 Mobile Gun System.

Lighten Up

The Army disposed of its light tanks in the early 1990s, when the M551 Sheridan was retired from the 82nd Airborne Division. Subsequent attempts to build a light tank have stalled out ( XM8 Armored Gun System ) or provided an unsatisfactory product (the M1128 Mobile Gun System .) Now the Army wants to try again, what could the Army's future tank look like? There have been several technological innovations since the last attempt.

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Firepower: Right now, the standard gun for light tanks is a 105-millimeter conventional tank gun. Conventional tank guns are versatile, capable of engaging tanks, armored vehicles, and infantry targets. Unfortunately the fixed barrel width makes it difficult to improve the gun's penetrating power as enemy tank armor improves over time.

Instead, the light tank of the future could easily punch above its weight by using a combination of light guns and anti-tank missiles. The vehicle could use a 30-millimeter chain gun to engage smaller targets and missiles such as Javelin or Hellfire to engage larger one. The Army could even bring back gigantic, blistering-fast LOSAT, or Line of Sight, Anti-Tank hypervelocity missile developed in the 1990s.

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Protection: Here's where the light tank will benefit the most from technological innovation. Active protection systems such as the Israeli Trophy and Russian Arena, which use radar antennas to track enemy rockets and missiles and shoot them down with shotgun-like blasts, can protect a small tank just as well as a large one. That means that a modern U.S. light tank could dispense with much of its armor—perhaps keeping just enough to stop 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun bullets. For larger projectiles, an active protection system would keep the tank crew safe.

Mobility: For decades, the U.S. Army resisted wheeled armored vehicles, preferring tracks over wheels. Tracks are better able to shrug off battlefield damage than wheels, and they are better in some types of ground—particularly crossing ditches or muddy, rough terrain. They're also much heavier.

Now that the Army has purchased the Stryker interim armored vehicle in large numbers, it's much less resistant to wheeled designs than it has been in the past. Wheeled armored vehicles are better at navigating bad terrain than ever, with the added advantage of creating a lighter vehicle with better mobility on roads.

The common conception of a light tank is a small, pudgy vehicle with a pipsqueak of a gun and a cramped, miserable with a short battlefield lifespan. The "light tank" of the future could be dropped out of airplanes, ringed with radars and other sensors, run on six or more wheels, and hurl tank-shattering missiles up to five miles away. Just don't call it a light tank.

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