The US Marines’ M1 Abrams AEV/ABVs

USMC M1-ABV(click to view full) Most main battle tanks have derivative Armored Engineering Vehicle variants. They sacrifice the main gun in order to provide powerful support for combat engineering tasks under fire, while keeping up with a mechanized brigade in any terrain. The Leopard 2, for instance, has its AEV-3 Kodiak, which has recently been developed and sold to Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The US Army’s Grizzly variant of America’s M1 Abrams tank was specifically designed to breach complex obstacles including mines, berms, wire, rubble, and tank-ditches, in order to keep a mechanized force moving through prepared opposition. Unfortunately, the Grizzly assault breacher was canceled in 2001, as part of a larger restructuring of the US Army’s program portfolio. The US Marines still believed they had a need for the Grizzly’s capability, however, given their core mission of forcible entry from the sea. Marine Corps Systems Command granted Milestone B approval for their similar “Assault Breacher Vehicles” in July 2003, and these AEVs were expected to achieve full operational capability in FY 2007. It took a while, but the machines have now performed their first major combat mission… ANAD ABV Assembly(click to view full) As it happened, the production […]