Rummy Remembers
In speaking about the conflict with the retired generals Rumsfeld talked about his first stint as the Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford, from 1975 to 1977. He said that the generals opposed his plans for the Abrams tank, but he held firm and was proved correct.
Wellllll, not quite. The 9 variants of the XM1 main battle tank weren’t built for evaluation until 1978, and the M1 Abrams went into production in 1980. The M1 was never tested in combat.
By the time the first Gulf War came around the Army was using the M1A1 version, which does look like the M1, but uses different armor, main gun, is made by a different company, has a different engine, etc., but it does still look a lot like the M1…mostly.
An interesting fact about the Abrams is that no one had ever died in one, even those stuck by accident by American anti-tank weaponry, until Iraq. Those “Improvised Explosive Devices” have been able to kill Abrams crews while destroying the tank.
