Trust the Pentagon to develop an oxymoron: a heavy light tank. The M10 Booker — recently canceled by the Department of Defense — took a wrong turn and ended up on the road to budgetary oblivion.
But will Europe do any better? As European nations vow to massively boost defense budgets — including new tanks — will they buy vehicles that either don’t work or are no longer relevant to the future battlefield?
For an example of what not to do, Europe can look to the M10, which should have been a small solution to a big problem. Main battle tanks have become so bulky that they are difficult to transport by air, require a ferocious amount of logistics, and require infrastructure such as sturdy road bridges. However awesome a 70-ton M1 Abrams is, the worst tank in the world is the one that’s not available when you need it.
The Mobile Protected Firepower concept that spawned the General Dynamics M10 seemed sensible enough when it emerged more than 25 years ago. Replace the US Army’s 1960s-vintage M551 Sheridan, an airdroppable 19-ton light tank notorious for its thin armor and unreliable 152-mm gun/missile launcher. Design an armored vehicle with a fairly big gun and moderate armor protection, yet light enough to provide mobile fire support for Army infantry brigades. For the sort of expeditionary warfare that the US has waged for almost a century, an armored vehicle with a 105-mm gun, a vehicle that could be quickly airdropped or airlifted, would be invaluable.
Instead, the Army ended up with a design that no one really knew what to do with. The M10 weighed 42 tons, about the same as a Russian T-72 main battle tank and more than a World War II M4 Sherman tank. It was too heavy to parachute, too big to be easily carried by a C-130 (and only room for one M10 on a C-17), and so bulky that even bridges at Army bases couldn’t handle the weight.
The project groaned under the weight of added requirements, such as armor thick enough to withstand hits from light cannon. “We got the Booker wrong,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told reporters. “We wanted to develop a small tank that was agile and could do [airdrops] to the places our regular tanks can’t.”
Even classifying the M10 was a problem. The Army called it an assault gun and bristled at suggestions that it was a light tank. Never mind that it looked like a tank, had the weight of a tank, and probably would have been used as a tank with disastrous results. Similar confusion plagued France’s AMX-10RC, which the French called a light tank when everyone else called it a heavy armored car. When the Ukrainians tried to use the AMX-10RC as a tank, they quickly learned the difference.
The M10 wasn’t the first American armored vehicle disaster. The notorious Future Combat Systems project cost $18bn before falling victim to rising costs and technological roadblocks.
However, Europe has also had its share of armored missteps. German equipment in Ukraine has proven faulty, according to a German military report. The Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzer suffers from “such high technical vulnerability that its suitability for combat is seriously questioned,” the older Leopard 1A5 tank is “often used only as makeshift artillery due to its weak armor,” and the newer Leopard 2A6 “is so costly to maintain that repairs on the front lines are often impossible.”
Then there is the odyssey of Britain’s $6bn-plus Ajax reconnaissance vehicle. Noise and vibration inside the Ajax were so intense that they actually injured the crew, and the vehicle was only fielded in 2025 after eight years of delay.
This does not bode well for what may be Europe’s flagship tank project: the Franco-German Main Ground Combat System. Though the goal is to develop a main battle tank to replace the Leclerc and Leopard 2 in the French and German armies, the MGCS could replace the Leopard as the most common European tank.
The cutting-edge features of the MGCS are a tank lover’s dream: a 140-mm cannon, an unmanned turret, drone swarms, and sophisticated AI. Compared to MGCS, the US seems stuck in the past, content merely to redesign the 1980-vintage M1 Abrams.
The problem is that the MGCS is slated for delivery around 2040. Even if the vehicle arrived on schedule — a minor miracle for complex defense projects — Europe will have to wait 15 years for a next-generation tank. In the meantime, European armies will have to soldier on with aging Cold War-era tank models.
A lot can change in 15 years. Who in 2010 would have predicted that, because of drones, tanks would have to scuttle around the battlefield encased in bird cages?
At the least, this means that the MGCS designers will have to anticipate the future in an era when military technology and tactics are changing almost daily. What are the lessons from the Ukraine war? Have drones rendered tanks no more than expensive artillery pieces on a battlefield where maneuver has been replaced by trench warfare? Or can defensive systems such as lasers and jammers enable armor to regain its former glory?
As America learned with the M10 project, much can change between when a weapon is conceived and when it is fielded. But with a trillion-dollar defense budget, the US can afford some mistakes. As Europe frantically rearms against a resurgent Russia, it can’t afford to buy a lemon.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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