Yet, in their ruthless ability to kill the enemy, they’re really not so different at all.Īs we begin our conversation, Brigadier General Ross Coffman says he’s at an auspicious place to talk tanks. With their machine learning and robotic gadgets, they’re likely unfamiliar to veterans of the Fulda Gap. From France to the US, officers and defence planners are busy developing the main battle tanks of the coming century. In truth, though, tanks are merely evolving. With the rise of desperate insurgency wars, from Afghanistan to Syria, it’s easy to imagine that the age of the tank ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – or, perhaps with Desert Storm’s dash through the sand dunes of Iraq the same year. Not that the US couldn’t have given as good as they got – their M48 Patton, weighing nearly 50t, could drive at 30 miles an hour and fire a shell nearly three miles.Īll that feels like ancient history now, of course. By the end of the Cold War, the Soviets had 4,200 tanks in East Germany, and another 8,200 armoured vehicles, and these behemoths would have been the steel fist of the Soviet punch through Western Europe. If the Soviets had ever taken the valley, after all, they would have been halfway to Frankfurt – with a major US airbase tantalisingly close by.Īnd how would the Soviets have managed it, had they ever received orders from Moscow to give the Yankees hell? If you’d asked that question to experts at the time, they’d probably have laughed. Snuggled amid the fields and woodlands of Hesse, the Fulda Gap doesn’t look like much – but the US had a point. If the Cold War ever went hot, the US was sure, this would be the spot that their communist enemies would choose to invade West Germany. Andrea Valentino speaks to Brigadier General Ross Coffman, director of the US army’s Next-Generation Combat Vehicles (NGCV) Cross-Functional Team and Dr Corde Lane, director of the human research and engineering directorate at the US Army Research Lab, about what the tank of the future might look like – and how it’ll have to contend with new cyber enemies.įor much of the 20th century, a single valley, in a sedate corner of Central Europe, obsessed and terrified Nato planners more than any other. But examine what’s rolling down the pipeline and that couldn’t be further from the truth. With the Cold War over for decades, it’s easy to imagine that old-fashioned battle tanks will soon be consigned to history’s dustbin.

Us army main battle tank history