was the u.s army correct in its cold war thinking about soviet armor
in 1980 the u.s army had a terrifying vision
an armada of soviet tanks sweeping across western europe all the way to the english channel and the
us army feared it had no weapons that could stop this vision from becoming a reality
in the arms likely to dominate the outcome of a future battle for central europe
armored fighting vehicles and counter weapons the us army then
probably will remain qualitatively and quantitatively inferior wrote u.s army
major general paul gorman in a secret 1980 study that wasn't declassified until 2014
the situation sounds eerily familiar to today where critics question whether russia's next
generation t14 armada tank is superior to western models or whether u.s and british
anti-tank weapons will be effective against a russian invasion of ukraine that will rely on
tanks for maneuver and firepower throughout the cold war the united states accepted that its
forces in europe would be outnumbered by a massive soviet war machine that by 1980 comprised 50 000
tanks or five times the american tank arsenal but u.s leaders had always comforted themselves with
the thought that soviet numbers could be offset by superior american technology training and tactics
but by the end of the 1970s when american military power had ebbed to its post-vietnam low pentagon
planners worried that the soviet union had achieved superiority in tank quality as well
as quantity in particular they warned that the new t-72 outclassed the m60 a1 and m60a3 essentially
upgrades of the 1950s m48 patent that were the backbone of the american tank arsenal at the time
even the first m1 abrams tanks entering service armed with the 105 millimeter cannon instead of
the later 120 millimeter cannon would have difficulty knocking out the more heavily
armed t-72 it assessed the t 72 as superior to the m60 a one by virtue of superior firepower
and armor protection the t72 is also believed to have numerous advanced features that the m60
lacked including an automatic electronic range of finder possibly laser range of finder an auto
loader to increase rate of fire a snorkel to cross rivers without needing bridging equipment
and an anti-radiation liner to protect the crew from nuclear weapons the army did at
least credit the m60 with carrying 60 rounds of main gun ammunition versus 40 for the t-72
nor could salvation be found in the anti-tank guided missiles that had begun entering service
in the 1970s tests and mathematical modeling by the army's ballistic research laboratory estimated
that ustow and dragon anti-tank missiles and the m 735 tungsten core round for the 105 millimeter
cannon had a probability of kill pk as high as 77 against the front armor of a soviet t 62 tank
but against the t-72 that probability dropped to it as low as 22 percent with even the upcoming amp
774 depleted uranium round only having a 50 chance to kill a t 72 according to the worst case models
that meant defense against a tank-centric soviet invasion of europe would be difficult until the
120 millimeter armed m one arrived in the mid 1980s whether one uses informed us or soviet
calculations the conclusion is that nato can expect through 1984 no advantage over the soviets
in quality of armor or anti-armor weapons and only a modest redressing of its present quantitative
disadvantage the study concluded but were these dire predictions justified it's hard to be sure
while udestdot and soviet made armor did clash in the 1973 and 1982 arab-israeli wars a climactic
and perhaps apocalyptic battle between american and soviet armies never happened still the
much-wanted team 72 seemed more of a paper tiger in the 1982 lebanon war when israeli merkava tanks
armed with 105 millimeter guns disposed of him and pitted against the abrams in the first gulf war
iraqi t 72s seemed almost pitiful in the end that 1980 u.s army study seems less about the
superiority of soviet tanks and more about the fact that u.s tank design atrophied between 1900
45 and 1980 with defense dollars and priorities focused on nuclear weapons and chasing guerrillas
through asian jungles tanks had become far from the most vital component of u.s military power
it wasn't until the m1 abrams arrived in the 1980s that the u.s could claim to have
a cutting edge tank and arguably the best in the world on the other hand many soviet
tanks tended to resemble the 1950s team 55 it self-descended from the world war ii third to
four which suggests that changes in tank design tend to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary
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