October 30, 2020
The U.S. Army’s Radical Plan for Squeezing More Firepower from Tanks
Comprehensive battlefield data collection, automatic target acquisition, and ammunition recommendations would drastically decrease the amount of time it would take to find enemy targets—and take them out.
by Caleb Larson
Since their combat debut during the First World War, tanks have steadily, but incrementally improved. Armor protection has gotten progressively more resistant thanks in part to advanced explosive-active armor (ERA) plating designed to defeat modern warheads, and active protection systems can detect and shoot down projectiles before they can hit a tank. Main guns have gotten larger and more powerful, as has engine output. In addition, some tanks have even dropped one crew member, the loader, in favor of an automatic loading mechanism.
And while today’s modern main battle tank could likely shred older Cold War-era tanks, there is one tank element that has remained virtually unchanged for the last several decades: the process of target acquisition, aiming, and firing. But one U.S. Army initiative, called Advanced Targeting and Lethality Aided System, or ATLAS, wants to change that.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-army%E2%80%99s-radical-plan-squeezing-more-firepower-tanks-171634
