U.S. tanks are now roughly on par with Russian tanks, according to a top general, and the American military doesn’t have the technology to recover its former advantage.
“I would not say that we have the world class tank that we had for many, many years,” Lieutenant General John Murray said during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on modernizing the Army. “I’ll be the optimist and say that we’re at parity with a lot of different nations.”
That was one example of what the Army calls a loss of “overmatch” — the technological advantage over potential adversaries that has ensured U.S. preeminence among world militaries in recent decades. Murray warned that “our most capable enemies are closing quickly” in a variety of areas, due to recent budget cuts to military spending, but the prowess of what the military calls heavy armor is particularly worrisome.
“I think the Abrams is still towards the top of its class in terms of combat systems, in terms of tanks,” Murray told Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. “I think we have parity, I think there is parity out there.”
Murray identified two American allies that have “parity” with U.S. tanks — Israel and the United Kingdom — but also warned that Russia, a looming adversary, has closed the gap with at least one tank model and potential a second. “I think the T-90 is probably pretty close,” he told Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. “People talk about the Armata tank and it’s still, in my mind, not completely fielded.”
Military planners have protested budget cuts for years, but even an increase in spending wouldn’t immediately resolve the tank problem.
“We’re just about reaching the limits of what we can do with the Abrams,” Murray said. “So it is time for us to start looking at a next generation tank. What I worry about is, there is nothing on the near-horizon that indicates a fundamental breakthrough in technology where we can come up with a lighter tank. And I think we would be mistaken to build another 75-ton tank as long as protection requirements are where they are.”
Tanks are just one area in which foreign militaries are “closing quickly” with the United States, prompting generals to call for an increase in defense spending, with a particular eye on replacing old combat systems. That’s a call that should find an echo from Trump’s national security advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, who raised the same issue while testifying before the same Senate subcommittee in 2016.
“We are outranged and outgunned by many potential adversaries,” he said.
