MPF is now the Army’s highest mid-term priority in combat vehicle modernization.” “The idea is to defeat enemy positions and destroy their light armored vehicles pre-emptively to provide U.S. “The Army particularly needs the as-yet nonexistent Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle to support infantry brigade combat teams–a lightweight vehicle that can be airlifted into battle and maneuver, dispersed if necessary, in close-quarters urban terrain, but with lethal long-range firepower to take out enemy armored vehicles,” read a March 2017 article in an Army magazine. (For context, the new Hummer EV from GM weighs a comparatively wispy 4.6 tons.) The MPF, as planned, weighs only 38 tons, relative to the 70 tons of an Abrams. In 2017, the Army outlined a vision for why they wanted a new, lighter vehicle than the existing Abrams tanks. The M112 Stryker Mobile Gun System, an armored and eight-wheeled vehicle with a powerful 105mm gun mounted in its turret, fulfills roughly the same role as the Sheridan, but the Strykers are set to be retired by the Army in 2022. When the Sheridan was fully retired in 1996, the Army did not have a direct replacement, and before the MPF, it lacked a tracked vehicle to take on that same role.
The heavy M1 Abrams main battle tank, also by General Dynamics, has undergone five variations, with a Next Generation version underway.īy contrast, the last light tank fielded by the Army was the M551 Sheridan, which saw action in Vietnam, Panama, and was also deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield, and then saw combat in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. While the Army has developed, deployed, and iterated on many vehicle designs, these have largely been adaptations of existing models. The Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle will be the “Army’s first new design vehicle fielded in over four decades,” the Army said in June. The contract, awarded to General Dynamics Land Systems, will deliver between 26 and 96 vehicles, with the first set to arrive in 2024. In June, the US Army announced it was spending up to $1.14 billion on this brand-new light tank, which is formally called the Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle. The machine is essentially a light tank, an armored turreted and tracked vehicle with a big gun.
In October, the Army is expected to announce a proper name for its newest vehicle.
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