The Army is undergoing an assessment regarding the role of heavy armor and specific kinds of ground vehicles, unmanned systems, and large platforms like the main battle tank. Will new and upgraded variants of the Abrams tank fight into future decades? Or will future armored ground wars be more aligned with lighter, faster, and more expeditionary armored platforms working in tandem with robotic vehicles?

It may be that some combination of both heavily armored tanks and faster, lighter, more expeditionary alternatives such as robotic vehicles may represent the optimal approach.

“I think it's too early to draw conclusions about that piece of it. It is an exciting time to kind of think about those force design elements at this particular juncture, juncture in the Army,” Under Secretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo told The National Interest in an interview. “But I think what we need to focus on at this point is continued experimentation, continued assessment of where the state of technology might be. And then I think we need to think through as we design, you know, look ahead beyond the army of 2030. How can we incorporate those technologies and those capabilities into the formations of the future, to enable us to be prepared to do what we've always done, which is to dominate the battlefield?”

At the most recent Association of the United States Army Annual Symposium, General Dynamics Land Systems unveiled a cutting-edge, new variant of the Abrams tank called the AbramsX. The new vehicle incorporates a host of innovations to include a hybrid electric drive, AI-enabled computing, and advanced active protection systems, among other things. Having built a hybrid-electric, twenty-seven-ton armored vehicle years ago for the Army’s Future Combat Systems called the Mounted Combat System, General Dynamics Land Systems leveraged historical expertise to build upon and greatly advance the innovations built into that vehicle with a mind to continuous modernization.