[Lazamataz]

These photos, while generating extreme anger and sadness, eerily seem to me like a cross of photos from Pearl Harbour and from the surface of Mars.

My initial response was surprise. I have come to think of the M1A1 as nearly invincible.

But I am mistaken. Chobham plate is 25 years old and technology is always advancing. The design of the M1A1 has a very few vulnerabilities. It is inevitable that our tanks will become more and more vulnerable as the technology marches on.

[Poohbah]

There isn't much you can do about someone kicking off a 155mm shell UNDERNEATH the tank, where the armor is rather thin.

Smart top-attack munitions are going to eventually end the present-day tank's reign. To armor the top deck of an Abrams to the same standard as the frontal arc would take about six times as much armor. I don't know what the frontal armor package weight is, but a good guess is that you'd double the overall weight of the tank just slapping a thick layer of Chobham armor on the top deck.

That, in turn, kicks off a series of weight increases: you will need a much bigger powerplant and suspension package to support and move the tank. That, in turn, will increase the fuel tankage required. So a final tank weight of 150 tons or so isn't unreasonable--unless, of course, you have to get it across a bridge that can only support 60 tons.

This is the issue that eventually killed the battleship: to provide adequate protection against armor-piercing bombs, the weight of the deck armor increased radically. The Nazis engaged in some speculative designs with 100,000-ton displacements and 20-inch guns; the latter seemed to be an afterthought to justify the enormous displacement (it was so big that if it had been built, it would not have been able to enter any German port because they were all too shallow for this monster).