The only reason any of this is known is because major US arms exports have to be notified to Congress – and on April 29 the world learnt of a possible sale to Australia of 160 M1A1 hulls and a great deal of related hardware. This is because the production line for the Abrams series ended in 2013, but with 3000 of them in storage since the end of the Cold War, there is plenty of hardware around that can be rebirthed by American companies for customers such as Australia. But rather than being new builds they will be made up of various refurbished and overhauled items in the US inventory. It now looks as if they will be retired completely and replaced by a fresh batch of 70 tonne M1A2 vehicles. The army currently has 59 older generation M1A1 Abrams tanks that have been in need of a substantial upgrade for years. However, this is not the case for Australia with no announcement from Defence Minister Peter Dutton on the topic and instead we have had to learn about it from the US government. Tanks remain the apex predators of high intensity land conflict – a potent symbol and also an important measure of how seriously a nation takes its defence.
Normally when a country orders 75 new main battle tanks (MBTs) for $2 billion it’s considered big news.
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