I guess experience is still the best teacher.

After years of using these big dudes in urban warfare, NOT what they were designed for, the U.S. Army is beefing up the Abrams with more protection designed for the urban setting. Turns out there's really nothing like a shot from that 120mm smooth bore to convince some of the other folks that they need to keep their distance.

Just to give the guys a bit more oopf, the army's buying 2,832 "loaders' armor gun shields," to provide protection around the loaders hatch on the top of the M-1 Abrams turret. The loader (who normally loads the 120mm gun), also has his own hatch, and a 7.62mm machine-gun on top of the turret.

The other machine-gun, next to the commanders hatch, is 12.7mm (.50 caliber) and already has a gun shield. The loaders gun shield kits cost about $16,000 each.



The loaders gun shield is part of the TUSK (Tank Urban Survival Kit). The kit is a collection of additional features for M1 tanks, which make them more effective when fighting in urban areas. Many of the items in TUSK have been added to tanks over the last three years, as they became available.

Bottom line with all this... Our tanks are lookin' more and more like Israeli tanks, which are designed for this shit from the ground up. Too bad it took this long to learn this lesson.