Top Tank : In Desert Grit, Soldiers Learn the Hard Lesson That Strategy, Not Just Technology, Wins Wars

Enemy tanks and armored personnel carriers roared down out of the rugged mountains, guns blazing as they attacked the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s defenses, slicing through the front lines.

Before the sun was an hour high over this giant Mojave desert training base northeast of Barstow, all 41 of the Texas-based regiment’s $2.7-million M-1 Abrams tanks were tangling with nearly twice that many aggressor tanks in a desperate, startlingly real battle.

This was a “force-on-force” exercise, the U.S. Army’s tank equivalent of the Top Gun school for naval aviators. And many of the Army’s 70-ton main battle tanks were getting the worst of it, despite their vaunted fire control systems, speed and maneuverability. To win, the 3rd Cav was going to have to fight like mad.

Learning the Hard Way

The tankers from Texas were learning the hard way that the commanders of the “Op-For” (Opposing Force) regiments at Ft. Irwin are experienced fighters.

Op-For tactics are right out of Soviet manuals, harsh and realistic. The tough, cocky Op-For veterans of the 177th Armored Brigade--dressed and equipped like Soviets--aim to teach one lesson: tactics, not expensive hardware, win battles. “People learn more from defeat than from victory,” one instructor said.

The training also puts the Army’s main battle tank to the test. Is the new M-1A1 version of the Abrams, known as the M-1, the best fighting machine ever built, as supporters claim? Or is it a costly, fuel-guzzling dinosaur doomed to the tar pits of history, as critics contend?

The M-1 is too costly, too heavy and too vulnerable to high-tech anti-tank weapons, and what the nation needs now are lightweight anti-tank fighting machines, said Bill Taylor Jr. of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank used by Congress and the Administration to evaluate the nation’s war capabilities.

Not everyone agrees. And arguments are heating up again as the Pentagon seeks more money for the M-1. Proposed modifications would raise its price to $3.2 million each, up from $2.7 million, officials report.

One of the M-1’s big supporters is Lt. Gen. William Desobry, a World War II tanker who helped design it before retiring as commander of the Army Armor Center at Ft. Knox, Ky. “The M-1 . . . can go across country at better than 30 miles an hour . . . has a stabilized turret and night firing capability,” he said, adding fondly that the M-1’s “beauty and agility . . . are overlooked because it’s so big and powerful.”

Debates about the future of armored warfare and the M-1’s capabilities are unlikely to be resolved soon, but most agree the best place to see the big, low-slung tanks in action and learn how well crews perform is at the training center.

Its rugged desert battlefields, experts say, are the largest, most sophisticated training facilities anywhere, with instructors and analysts linked to combat units by laser technology, microwave radios, satellites and computer nets. They even have video instant replay.

Lasers Instead of Bullets

Battlefield conditions are so realistic that the only things missing are blood and death. Weapons are modified to shoot laser beams, not bullets or missiles. Sensors strapped on fighters and vehicles record laser hits and relay information to computers in the war room. A hit turns on a flashing yellow light atop a tank, signaling it is dead.

Watching the 3rd Cav deploy across a dry lake bed in a classic, trapping defense and later engage Op-For’s two mechanized regiments, it was obvious that tank warfare had changed little over the years.

The first tanks--simple, ungainly tractors protected by bullet-proof armor--were built by the British in 1914 to fight the deadly machine guns of entrenched German infantry. The Germans countered by building armor-piercing anti-tank weapons, which forced the Allies to build bigger tanks with thicker armor and more fire power; that, in turn, resulted in development of more powerful anti-tank weapons, and so on.

By World War II’s start, basic tank design was fixed, with a driver down in front and a gunner, loader and commander up in the turret. Each tank had a rotating gun turret and two or three machine guns. Under fire, crews battened down the hatches and operated with periscopes, almost blind and vulnerable to infantry attack.

In World War II, Nazi panzer divisions pushed tank warfare to its current form, deploying infantry-supported Tiger tanks in divisions that blitzkrieged Europe and Africa. The Tigers had thick frontal armor and outgunned the U.S. Army’s main battle tanks, the M-4 Shermans, which were faster, more maneuverable, reliable machines. The Shermans cost $55,000 and took only eight months to design. More than 48,000 of them were built and used by Allied armies. Military historians dubbed them the “tank that won World War II.”

‘Outgunned, Outclassed’

But their weakness was the 75MM cannon that bounced shells off the thick hulls of the German Tigers. “We were outgunned and outclassed and it was only through sheer numbers that we overcame the Germans in tank encounters,” Desobry recalled. He never forgot those lessons when it came to designing the M-1 in 1972. “I tried to look at all the things that were weak in the M-4 to make sure we didn’t repeat the mistakes.”

Crew survival was the No. 1 priority, he said. The M-1, which weighs twice as much as the Sherman, is the most heavily armored tank ever built.

It fires a 105MM gun or 120MM smooth bore cannon, has three machine guns and a crew of four. Its 1,500-horsepower turbine engine provides startling speed. It has power steering, an automatic transmission and rides like a big rocking chair.

The heart of the M-1 is its fire-control system with fully integrated laser range-finders and digital computers that consider items such as wind velocity, temperature, ammo type and vehicle movement. Infrared devices give crews night vision.

It took eight years to design and build the first M-1, which was supposed to have cost $507,000 a copy but ran way over budget. Part of the cost overruns were due to mechanical defects: engine air intakes sucked in sand that fouled the turbines; engine mounts cracked; transmissions failed; tracks came off.

A Fuel Guzzler

Those were problems that could be fixed. One of the tank’s big remaining shortcomings is “it’s a gas guzzler,” one expert critic said, explaining that M-1s go 1 mile on 1.5-2 gallons of diesel. The tank’s defenders concede it eats fuel but say it carries enough supply to fight all day.

There are other problems. Taylor said rapid deployment of M-1s always will be hard because only one of the 70-ton monsters can fit in the largest military cargo planes. Tankers also may have difficulty traveling cross-country because many bridges are not designed to support their weight.

Still, the “M-1 is the most effective tank we’ve ever fielded . . . certainly it’s the best protected tank ever built,” insists military historian Richard P. Hunnicut.

He and other experts say that as long as the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries maintain large armored forces, the U.S. and its NATO Allies need a counter force. They agree that differences between U.S. and Soviet tanks are only a matter of degree and that technology alone doesn’t win battles. That is why tankers from every unit in the Army train for three weeks at Ft. Irwin, just as the 3rd Cavalry did recently.

Before dawn, the 3rd Cav dug in and waited nervously for its big test. The regiment’s 41 battle tanks and an equal number of M-3 Bradley armored personnel carriers were in a deep arch across the flats, allowing the unit to concentrate its fire on a “killing zone” between them. Out in front, rugged mountains to the left and right would force enemy tanks through a narrow gap and into a trap.

Sgt. Jerome Jackson--a D Company, 1st Battalion tank commander--had his M-1 burrowed in a trench with only the turret and 120MM cannon visible.

Inside the tank, it was crowded, every square inch taken up by radios, ammo storage, computers and the bulk of the huge cannon. Down below, the driver reclined in a near-prone position, inserted into a compartment so small that tankers taller than 6 feet have a hard time getting in the seat.

Up in the turret, Cpl. Melvin Thomas had the gun switches on, and was scanning the desert darkness in the glow of the green light of the infrared optics. When the Op-For tanks did show, a computer system would give him a 90% chance of scoring a hit on every shot.

But out of sight and range, out beyond the mountain ridges in front of the 3rd Cav, two motorized regiments of aggressors were racing forward, 160 tanks--outdated American Sheridan M-551s modified to resemble Soviet T-72s--and armored personnel carriers ready for combat, Soviet style.

As dawn began to break, Op-For artillery pounded 3rd Cav positions; overhead, screaming A-10 jets simulated Soviet fighters bombarding American positions. On the graying skyline, U.S. Air Force F-16s swarmed over the Op-For column, trying to knock out tanks that had moved far below, partly protected by steep mountainsides and narrow canyons.

With the sun up only a few minutes, Jackson spotted dust high up on the ridges to the left, then saw the column of Soviet tanks pouring down out of a pass. Mixed in were personnel carriers carrying squads of infantry men.

The enemy was driving fast, attacking the left flank, not coming through the gap as the 3rd Cav commanders had expected.

Caught by Surprise

The regiment was caught by surprise, dug in, with most of its firepower focused in the wrong spot. Before 3rd Cav’s commanders could react, the M-1s and Bradley’s on the left flank had been knocked out. They sat in the swirling dust, yellow lights flashing as the Soviet tanks raced down the unprotected left flank, out of range of the M-1 gunners.

The 3rd Cav’s commander, having committed all his forces to his defensive trap and with nothing to halt this thrust, ordered a desperate counterattack. He tried to swing his unit’s right flank around to head off the attack and shore up the collapsing left flank. The M-1 and Bradley drivers gunned their powerful engines and raced across the desert.

It was too little, too late.

Jackson’s M-1 was parked in mid-battlefield, yellow light flashing. Knocked out of action early on, he stood beside his tank, explaining of the mock enemy: “We were dug in way over there when they hit over here and we were ordered to try to fight our way over, but they were swarming everywhere, they were all around us. . . . I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Gunner Thomas added, “We were overrun . . . they got behind us before we could stop them. I know I got one (enemy tank) out in front, but then we had one behind us and I was swinging around when he got us and zap, it was all over.”

Even in defeat, however, Jackson bragged about his M-1A1, saying, “This is the best tank in the world.”

Lopsided Victory

After the battle, Lt. Col. James Etchechuri, commander of the attacking Op-For forces, summed up the lopsided victory.

Though Soviet manuals call for a 4-1 advantage to win the kind of attack his troops had carried out, “We only had 2-1 odds in our favor,” Etchechuri said. “But we controlled the tempo . . . and found their weakness.”

He explained that his unit’s scouts had found that the 3rd Cav had made the fatal mistake of failing to put troops out to protect land mines and traps placed against the hills to anchor the left flank. Op-For scouts, working through the night, cleared the mines and knocked out the traps, opening the gate for Etchechuri. Op-For analysts later cited another mistake: the training forces had no reserves to counterattack as Etchechuri’s regiments poured down out of the mountains into the flats.

But “they shouldn’t be disappointed when Op-For wins,” said Edward Luttwak, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Op-For is run by tacticians . . . men who can outmaneuver you, trick you into losing . . . there’s nothing like Ft. Irwin to learn tactics.”