Original subtitles

The second Iraq War, March 2003.

Spearheading the battle,

the United States M1 Abrams,

the most formidable tank the world has ever seen.

The trenches of World War One, 1916.

The British Mark I,

the world's first battle tank.

The Abrams and the Mark 1.

And in the years in between,

a race to build the ultimate mobile armoured fighting machine.

In war after war,

the best tank can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

The weapons race is for the battle tank.

The US M1A2 Abrams.

Latest version of a battle tank designed

to overwhelm the Soviet Army during the Cold War.

The British Mark I.

Thrown into battle, September 1916,

to burst through German defences.

Between 1916 and today,

new generations of battle tank leave their mark

on the battlefields of each new conflict.

World War One,

World War Two,

the Cold War, the Middle East,

Operation Desert Storm,

Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Running through each campaign,

a weapons race that gives one side a vital advantage.

In every new tank, excellence is defined

by the balance of three critical requirements.

Not just speed and cross-country mobility,

but the ease with which the crew can do its job in combat.

Not just the size of the gun,

but how quickly it can be aimed, fired and reloaded.

Not just the thickness of the armour,

but how well it can deflect a projectile.

Trade-offs emerge as the tank is tested in battle.

It's the overall balance among them

that determines which machine is ahead

at any given stage in the race.

Go for speed and mobility

and you sacrifice firepower and protection.

Go for firepower and protection

and you sacrifice speed and mobility.

And that's the essence of tank warfare

from the earliest days of the tank

through to the present day.

Other crucial factors emerge as the weapon is tested in conflict.

But the first three requirements are the reason why the tank was invented.

World War One, the Western Front.

The rival armies are dug into impenetrable trench systems.

Artillery and carefully positioned machine guns

annihilate every infantry assault.

Millions face slaughter,

unless these defences can be breached.

Inspiration comes from the United States.

In 1906, Benjamin Holt puts tracks

on an agricultural steam tractor.

By 1914,

his invention is pulling artillery on the Western Front.

The basic ingredient of the tank,

the tractor with caterpillar treads,

was in use in various parts of the world

as an agricultural vehicle.

It's hard to imagine a situation where nobody thought

of slapping some armour on this tractor

and fitting it with a machine gun or a small cannon.

The race is on to build a machine

that can break the trench stalemate.

It was designed to cross the moonscape of no man's land,

with shell craters and other things,

to be able to survive small arms fire and machine-gun fire,

and finally break through the barbed wire and other obstacles,

punch a hole through enemy lines,

so that infantry could follow behind and get into the enemy's rear.

In Britain, Colonel Ernest Swinton

proposes to adapt the Holt tractor into an armoured vehicle.

He has the strong support of government minister Winston Churchill.

By January 1916,

a prototype, nicknamed Mother, has been completed.

Its performance is slow,

capable of only 3.5 miles an hour.

Its armour is only 8mm thick,

barely enough to stop rifle or machine-gun bullets.

But it has two six-pounder 57mm cannons

and four machine guns, more than enough firepower

to deal with German machine-gun nests.

And specially developed all-round tracks

prove capable of getting it over substantial obstacles.

Mother is ordered into production as the Mark I.

It's so secret workers are told

they are making a mobile water container for the Middle East.

So, the new weapon becomes known as a tank.

Although they don't know it, the British have competition.

But only from their ally France,

which is also developing the Holt tractor

into a cross-country armoured vehicle.

The British win the race to get the tank into battle.

September 15th, 1916.

26 British Mark I's

rumble into the Battle of the Somme

to support an infantry assault.

At first the Germans flee in panic,

but there are too few tanks to be effective.

And their performance is poor, in the muddy conditions.

The debut of the British tank

in World War One was actually a disaster.

Many tanks bogged down, many broke down,

and the German soldiers facing it

thought that this new wonder weapon

was, actually, not all that it was cracked up to be.

Undaunted, the British are convinced they're on to a winner.

A separate Tank Corps is formed.

Staff officers, led by Colonel JFC Fuller,

work out a battle plan to use massed tanks

to lead an infantry breakthrough.

When the French test their tanks in battle,

in the Spring of 1917,

the cross-country performance is so bad

they abandon their first designs

and decide to concentrate on a lighter, smaller tank.

While the French are rethinking their approach,

a third competitor enters the race.

Despite the poor showing of the enemy's new weapon,

Germany begins to develop its own tank,

the 32-ton Sturm-Panzerwagen A7V.

It's an even more unwieldy armoured box than the French design

with even worse cross-country performance.

During 1917,

the stalemate on the Western Front grinds on,

horrific losses continue.

Then, at dawn on November 20th, 1917,

the British Tank Corps puts its new battle plan

into action at Cambrai.

376 tanks go into action without an artillery barrage.

The German line collapses

and British troops push through a six-mile gap,

suffering only slight casualties.

The tank has shown that used en masse and with surprise

it can break a hole in the enemy's line.

But can it now go on to win the war?

Cambrai. November 20th, 1917.

By evening the British advance three to four miles

through the hole their tanks tore in the German line.

But as dawn breaks on the second day,

barely half the tanks are still running.

And by the next day, only a quarter.

There are too few to keep up the momentum.

Attempts to use cavalry are cut-down by machine-gun fire,

and the Germans counter-attack.

Cambrai shows that another requirement will be vital for battle tanks.

It's no good creating a hole in the enemy's line

if enough tanks aren't running to follow up.

The battle also makes clear to the British

they need another type of tank, smaller, faster,

able to do the job of cavalry.

They come up with the 14-ton Whippet.

Armed only with machine guns,

it's capable of 8 mph.

But World War one ends before the Whippet can be widely used.

While the British are building on their experience of Cambrai,

the French introduce their new small tank,

the 6.7-ton Renault M-17.

Its size and low speed

mean that it has poor cross-country performance.

But the Renault has one revolutionary feature,

its main armament is a machine gun

or a 37mm cannon in a revolving turret,

giving it considerable flexibility.

November 1918,

the First World War drags to its bloody close.

Tanks continue to provide infantry support,

but they're too slow and unreliable

to be the formidable battlefield weapon that was hoped for.

So far, three nations have built and used their own tanks.

Britain, with its mixed fleet of Mark V's and Whippets.

France, with the light Renault.

Germany, with its cumbersome A7V.

One other nation, the United States,

has bought and used the light French Renault in large numbers.

It has also begun a joint development project with Britain

for a new heavy tank, the Liberty.

Peace brings major changes.

Defeated and forbidden from producing any more tanks,

Germany drops out, temporarily.

Isolated and isolationist,

the United States loses interest.

Only in one area

does the US leap ahead, unofficially.

Independent designer Walter Christie

experiments with revolutionary suspension systems.

By the end of the 1920s,

he has produced a series of prototypes

which can exceed 50 miles an hour

and have extraordinary cross-country ability.

But the US Army ignores them.

Only in Britain and France do designers and military planners

continue building on their World War One experience.

During the 1920s,

the race continues to improve the three key features,

performance, protection and firepower.

The French introduce new tanks which are well-armoured

and have good cross-country mobility.

But they build into them features which turn out

to severely limit their firepower and crew performance.

Virtually, all the French designs have a small turret

from which a single man has to command the tank,

operate the radio, and fire the gun.

It's too much for one man to do effectively.

The main French heavy tank, the Char B,

not only has the single-man turret

with a 47mm cannon,

but its main 75mm armament

is buried in the hull and can only be moved up and down.

The whole tank has to turn to aim it.

Also, the French remain convinced

that infantry support is the tank's main role.

They do not see any need to explore new ways

of using their new battle tanks.

In contrast, in Britain a small group of officers,

like JFC Fuller and military theorists,

like Basil Liddell Hart,

use their experience of World War One

to begin a fundamental rethink in the race for the battle tank.

They decide that the tank can be used not just to support infantry

but to win battles.

By combining a fast, reliable tank

with mobile artillery, airpower, and good communications,

armoured spearheads will thrust deep behind enemy lines

and win a swift victory.

Throughout the 1920s,

the British Army allowed

its armour enthusiasts and supporters

an unusual level of intellectual freedom

to go ahead and try new ideas, new designs,

new tactics.

And a very, very vibrant

doctrine emerges.

A fast and reliable tank,

the Vickers Medium Mark II,

is tested in a series of exercises on Salisbury Plain.

Although lightly armoured,

the Mark II has a 47mm gun.

Its five man crew is concentrated in or near the turret,

to improve co-ordination, and it is fitted with a radio.

The British are developing a new generation of battle tank

and exploring ways of using it to win battles.

And their experiments are being watched with interest elsewhere.

In 1924, Germany and the Soviet Union

begin a secret joint development programme.

1928, the Soviets produce their first light tanks.

Young German officers, like Major Heinz Guderian,

experiment with the British ideas

using mock tanks made of wood and canvas.

At the end of the 1920s, the army that's making

the best use of tanks is that of Great Britain.

It has the largest number of tanks,

the most enthusiastic tank officers,

and the best tank theory.

But British innovation is short-lived.

October, 1929.

Wall Street crashes

and the world plunges into the Great Depression.

In Britain, experimentation in both design

and tactics comes to a halt.

When the British develop a new tank during the 1930s,

it is a throwback to the infantry support idea.

The Matilda I fails in just about all the main requirements.

Its firepower is a single machine gun.

It can only manage eight miles an hour.

Only in protection does the Matilda measure up.

Its armour is even thicker than that of the Char B.

In contrast, the Soviet Union

pushes ahead along the lines pioneered by the British.

In 1931,

it buys two of Walter Christie's tanks

and copies his revolutionary suspension.

By 1934, the Soviets produce

the 11-ton BT-5.

It has a 45mm gun,

as big as the British Medium Mark II.

It is better armoured and twice as fast.

But it is Germany that now leaps ahead in the race.

When Adolf Hitler comes to power,

the officers who had been secretly experimenting

with British ideas are able to put them into practice.

They appreciate that for the tank to be a battle winner,

it must not only be well-balanced in firepower,

performance and protection

but it must be used to produce maximum impact.

It's not just the technical qualities

of the weapon that make it successful on the field.

It's the tactics they employ,

and it's also the doctrine which they work under

as part of an army and a combined arms force.

They develop the Liddell-Hart/Fuller ideas,

that it is armoured units operating

with mobile infantry and airpower

which will win battles in the future.

Germany's tank development programme

produces fast, well-armed designs.

The 15-ton Mark III has a 37mm gun.

And the 20-ton Mark IV

has a short-barrelled 75mm.

Although lightly armoured, they are spacious designs

with plenty of scope for development.

Unlike the French designs,

they also group three of their five crew in the turret

to give excellent crew performance.

The Germans understood that warfare

is not an individual sport, it's a team sport.

They put people in where they could communicate,

transfer information to each other,

and therefore it was a team fighting a system

instead of isolated individuals.

Within four years,

Hitler has annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia,

and is threatening Poland.

The world is about to go to war.

In World War One, the tank was in its infancy.

A lot more is riding on it now.

This time, the race for the battle tank

could decide the outcome of the war.

September 1st, 1939.

Germany invades Poland.

World War Two has begun.

After 20 years of development and debate,

two very different approaches to the battle tank race

are about to be tested where it counts, in combat.

The French and British infantry support tanks,

well-armoured, but slow.

Firepower and crew performance

are likely to be their biggest flaws.

Most French tanks have the inefficient single-man turrets

and the Char B's hull-mounted 75mm gun

is difficult to aim quickly.

The main British tank, the Matilda I,

only has a machine gun in its one-man turret.

Against these are the faster but less well-armoured

German Mark III's and IV's

with good cross-country performance and comparable guns.

As the war began,

the Germans were very much in the lead.

They had, in the Panzer III,

the best all-round tank that was then in service.

But Germany faces a problem,

with a secondary, but still critical factor

in the race for the battle tank.

The war has begun too early.

Germany has produced too few medium Mark III's and IV's.

This shortfall doesn't matter in Poland,

where the opposition has even fewer tanks

and doesn't know how to use them.

But it may prove critical in the West,

where Britain and France have 3,000 tanks.

Most are French, as well-armed and better protected

than the 600 Mark III's and IV's Germany has available.

The remaining 2,000 German tanks

are designed only for reconnaissance and training.

But the coming battle will not just be a confrontation

between two types of battle tank

but between different ways of using them.

French and British tanks are dispersed to support the infantry.

German tanks are concentrated in separate Panzer divisions,

and will be used en masse to probe for weak spots

and then push through to cut off the enemy's forces.

May 10, 1940. Hitler attacks in the West.

German Panzers move through

the seemingly impenetrable Ardennes,

split the Allied armies

and race for the English Channel.

Within eight days, they reach the coast.

Germany's tanks and the way they are used

have decisively defeated the French and British.

And their superiority continues on the next battlefield.

North Africa, 1941.

the German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel,

one of the outstanding leaders of the Blitzkrieg in France,

faces the British.

Rommel's tanks have increased firepower.

The Panzer Mark III's now have a 50mm gun

and Mark IV's, a long-barrelled 75mm gun,

which gives much greater range and penetration.

They have also substantially increased their protection.

Until now, a solid shot

has been used to penetrate a tank's armour.

The Germans develop a super-hardened surface

more difficult to pierce.

The British respond

by producing an armoured-piercing round

with a cap designed to break open the hardened face

so the shot can still penetrate.

The German response is to attach additional thin layers of armour

to break up these capped rounds prematurely.

It's a new escalation in the race

between firepower and protection.

But the basic problem for the British

is that the German tanks still completely outrange them.

Even the newest British tanks

still have only a two-pounder, 37mm gun.

British designers and industry seem unable

to come up with a quick solution.

It's very difficult for a nation, due to a tactical need,

to develop a new tank that is highly successful.

The British just didn't have the time

to develop the sort of tank they needed for desert warfare.

In desperation, Britain turns to its old ally,

the United States.

Fortunately, it finds a giant which has just woken up.

The success of the German Blitzkrieg

has been an alarm call for the United States to rearm.

In this desperate race the United States

has a huge advantage over even the Germans

in one key factor.

The United States has a world-beating auto industry.

And now it's mobilised for the war effort.

In 1939,

the US Army was in very poor shape where tanks were concerned.

Fortunately, however, the US auto industry

was in very good shape,

and that auto industry turned out to be the secret weapon

of the US armoured force.

The first US medium tank to reach the British

is the M3 Lee/Grant.

But it has a weakness.

Its main 75mm gun

is mounted in the hull

so the tank has to turn to aim it.

The second US medium tank

is the 33-ton Sherman

with a turret-mounted 75mm gun.

This is rushed to the British Army in North Africa.

It goes straight to the front and plays a key role

in the crucial battle of El Alamein.

The Sherman proves a match for the German Mark IV.

It is just as fast, its armour is just as thick,

and its gun just as powerful.

The Sherman leads the British 8th Army

in its 1,200 mile pursuit of Rommel,

and is the main tank of the US and British forces

which finally win a decisive victory in North Africa.

Now, the race switches back to Europe.

June 1941.

Adolf Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa.

His invasion of the Soviet Union.

The bulk of his Panzers

are still the up-gunned Mark III's and IV's.

The reason the Germans

allowed their armour designs to stagnate

was that they didn't think it was going to be a very long war.

They believed that Russia would only take a year or two

and they wouldn't need to design new tanks.

By the end of November, the Panzers are close to Moscow.

German tanks and tactics again seem unbeatable.

Then, on December 5th,

they run into a devastating surprise.

Tens of thousands of fresh Soviet troops

fall upon the Germans and drive them back.

They are equipped with a new tank

which completely outclasses the Panzers.

With the outcome of World War Two hanging in the balance,

the Red Army has leaped ahead

and begun a new stage in the race for the battle tank.

The new Soviet T-34

represents the most successful integration yet

of the three most critical factors in a battle tank.

It's fast, 32 mph,

compared to the German Mark IV's 24.

And it has a wide track,

for superb cross-country ability.

Ironically, the suspension is based

on American Walter Christie's design,

which the United States turned down.

The T-34 has revolutionary

angled armour to deflect shells.

This more than doubles the protection

without increasing the thickness or weight.

Its main armament is a 76mm gun.

The T-34 design

meets another requirement brilliantly.

It's simple and easy to manufacture in bulk.

Faced with this devastating new opponent,

Hitler orders a crash programme to regain the initiative in the race.

Two new tank designs are rushed into production.

The 43-ton Panther,

with a 75mm gun and sloped armour.

Germany's answer to the T-34.

And the 56-ton Tiger,

a quantum leap in tank design

with sufficient frontal armour to deflect a 75mm shot,

and an 88mm gun

which outranges every other existing tank.

By mid-1943,

Hitler is facing one of the most crucial tank battles ever fought.

It will be a key moment in the race for the battle tank.

After annihilating a German army at Stalingrad,

the Soviets are pushing west.

Near Kursk their front-line bulges deep

into German-held territory.

Hitler orders his generals to eliminate this salient.

But he delays the offensive

until the Tiger I and Panther

can be rushed into service.

July 5th. The Battle of Kursk begins.

[explosion]

After a week, the Germans have been halted.

With their 88mm guns,

the Tigers can pick off the T-34s at long range,

but the Soviets use their speed and superior numbers

to get close in, especially around the sides

and backs of the German tanks,

where they are vulnerable.

The Soviets lose many more tanks, but they can afford to.

With the T-34, the Russians had a good tank,

easy to produce in huge numbers.

Not a match for the best of the German tanks,

but they simply swarmed them.

They could afford to lose ten T-34s

for every Tiger they killed.

The German designers have built superb fighting machines,

but they failed on two other key requirements.

The Tiger I and Panther are complex to build.

German industry isn't capable of producing them in sufficient numbers.

The Tigers and Panthers

are over-engineered and temperamental.

Early teething problems, especially in the fuel systems,

meant that they often burst into flames in the middle of combat.

For the next two years,

German forces in the east are constantly on the retreat.

They are totally outnumbered by the flood of T-34s

pouring from Soviet factories.

And the skill of the Soviet designers

means that the T-34 can easily be up-gunned

to take an 85mm gun.

Hitler has lost the race for the battle tank in the east.

Now, his new tanks are about to face a crucial test in the west.

June 6th, 1944,

the Allies land in Normandy.

Needing a massive number of tanks,

they stick with the reliable Sherman.

An attempt is made to upgrade firepower

against the sloped armour protection of the new German tanks.

A new high explosive anti-tank shell

is fired at a slight trajectory

so it explodes flat against the slope

and then creates a jet of molten metal

which penetrates the armour and kills the crew.

But the small fields, narrow lanes

and high hedgerows of Normandy

are ideal defensive terrain for the German tanks.

With its impenetrable frontal armour

and 88mm gun,

the Tigers can lurk in ambush

and pick off the Allied Shermans before they get in range.

The Tiger tank was a feared weapon

during the Battle of Normandy, and the Germans used it,

they used it as a psychological tool

against the Allies, often moving them around

to give the impression they had far more than they did have.

Like the Soviets, the western Allies

have to rely on overwhelming the Tigers

with superior numbers.

Once they can get around the back and sides,

their new shells have a chance of working.

Gradually Allied numbers and air power

combine for the knockout punch.

August 1944.

They break out.

Now, the Sherman comes into its own.

The great virtues of the Sherman

were mechanical reliability and operational mobility.

The Sherman was a tank that was at its best

in exploiting a breakthrough

rather than making one.

On both their eastern and western fronts,

the Germans are ultimately beaten by numbers.

Their final tanks, improved Panthers

and the 68-ton Tiger II,

are technologically superb

but far too complex to produce in bulk.

It's important to remember that for all of its legend,

only a few hundred Tigers were built.

Tens of thousands of Shermans

and T-34s were built,

and it was these numbers that just overwhelmed the Germans.

Berlin, May, 1945.

The end of the road for Hitler's Germany.

A major stage in the race for the battle tank ends.

But another stage is about to begin.

The wartime alliance which defeated Hitler is falling apart.

The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the western powers

will see a new generation of battle tanks

go eyeball-to-eyeball

in the world's new hotspots.

in the world's new hotspots.

By 1948,

the Soviet Union and western powers are squaring off

across the plains of north-west Europe.

Now, the battle tank weapons race

is dictated by the sort of battle they intend to fight.

The Soviets believe that attack is the best form of defence.

The Russian tanks are primarily offensive.

They have very large guns, they've got great mobility,

and they're very, very low to the ground to reduce their silhouette.

The western allies have a different focus.

They want to stop them.

For this reason, there is a bias

in favour of well-armed,

heavily armoured,

relatively immobile tanks.

The two sides in the race

start to focus on different requirements.

For the Red Army it is performance and firepower.

1949,

the result is the 35-ton T-54

with a 100mm gun.

For NATO, the focus is on

protection and firepower.

In particular, the British are determined

never to be outclassed again

as they had been by the German Tigers.

The 50-ton Centurion,

which comes into service shortly after the end of World War Two,

is well-armoured, with good cross-country performance.

But firepower is where the Centurion scores.

Its 84mm gun

fires a new shell with a lot more bang

from the same size gun.

A thinner armour-piercing warhead

is cased in a jacket, or sabot,

which flies off as the warhead leaves the muzzle.

With a much higher explosive charge

the warhead has greater range and penetrative power.

The Centurion also has a revolutionary new

gyroscopic control system

which provides an outstandingly stable firing platform,

especially accurate while on the move.

The new British tank can destroy enemy armour

with deadly-accurate fire at long range.

The Centurion leapfrogs ahead in the race.

After World War Two,

the US seems uncertain if battle tanks will be needed again

and starts to slip behind.

Its last World War Two design,

the M-26 Pershing,

is updated to become the M-47 Patton I.

And then, the considerably redesigned

M-48 Patton II.

These developments mean that the US designs

are barely meeting one of the crucial factors

in the race for the battle tank.

Their 90mm guns

have better fire-control than the Soviet tanks,

and could probably hold their own against them.

But American design fails badly in another crucial factor.

US tanks have an extraordinary thirst,

the M-48 gulps four US gallons per mile.

For the rest of the Cold War the race leaps back and forth.

The US fits a British 105mm gun

into the M-60 and gets a tank

that can take on the most recent Soviet T-55.

The Soviets retake the lead

with the 40-ton T-62

with a 115mm gun.

Then in 1967,

the British deploy the 50-ton Chieftain

with excellent sloped armour

and a massive 120mm fully-stabilised gun

which can fire on the move.

1971,

the Soviets hit back with the T-72.

It has a 125mm gun

with an automatic-loader reducing the crew to three.

These Soviet machines are rugged and easy to build.

But to achieve their low silhouette, performance suffers.

They are very cramped and their crews tend to become exhausted quickly.

[It may seem rather ridiculous, but actually,

comfort in tanks is a very important tactical factor.

If you've ever ridden in a tank cross-country at speed

for any period of time, it becomes very tiring.

So, a comfortable tank is an effective tank.

And significantly, western designs were much more comfortable

than Warsaw Pact or Eastern Bloc designs.

Only combat can show whether

the NATO or Soviet tank design is best.

But the test doesn't come in Europe.

The confrontation is by proxy.

The arena is the Middle East.

In 1967,

Israel uses British Centurions

and modified US Shermans

to rout the armies of Syria and Egypt

with their Soviet T-54s.

But Israeli training and strategy are also superior,

making it difficult to know whether it was their tanks

or their tactics that completely outclassed the enemy.

I think the lesson out of the '67 war,

relative to offensive or defensive tanks,

it is more important who you're fighting than what you're fighting.

Six years later, October 6th, 1973.

Egypt's surprise attack across the Suez Canal

starts the Yom Kippur War.

Syria assaults the Golan Heights.

Syria assaults the Golan Heights.

What is about to happen is crucial in the race for the battle tank.

The Israeli tanks are hugely outnumbered,

but their Centurions do the job,

knocking out ten Syrian T-62s

for every one loss.

It's here that we see the only true manifestation

of the tactics and technology

that would have been used on the central European plains.

[Bruce Gudmundsson] The fighting on the Golan Heights in 1973

demonstrates that when it comes to a set-piece battle,

a battle in which one side

has a strong defensive position,

a British-style tank, with its heavy armour

and first-class firepower,

is much superior to a Soviet tank.

The Yom Kippur War changes the rules of the weapons race.

Protection and firepower are now the highest priorities.

Now, the British, with their concern

for maximum protection, lead the field.

They develop a new type of armour,

named Chobham,

which gives far greater protection with less weight.

To make a projectile lose its power,

Chobham has two armoured skins

sandwiching a core of ceramic tiles.

As the projectile penetrates the outer skin,

the ceramic shatters and disperses the impact,

ideally before the inner skin is penetrated.

By the early 1980s,

there are four very similar contenders

in the race for the best battle tank.

The British 62-ton Challenger 1,

with Chobham armour, and a 120mm gun.

The German 62-ton Leopard II

with a 120mm gun.

It also has British Chobham armour.

The Soviet 46-ton T-80

with a 125-mm gun,

and revolutionary gas turbine engine.

The American 70-ton M1 Abrams.

This also has a gas turbine engine.

It starts with a 105mm gun,

but is upgraded in 1984

to 120mm.

It also uses Chobham armour.

The Abrams is designed for a defensive battle

with firepower and protection supreme.

November, 1989.

The Berlin Wall comes down.

It's the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It seems the great battle tanks designed for the Cold War

have been rendered irrelevant.

They may never go head-to-head in combat.

Then, in 1990.

Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.

The US M1A1 Abrams

and British Challenger 1 tanks of the Coalition forces

go up against Soviet T-72s.

Although the Iraqis in theory have more tanks,

they are completely outclassed.

It is the same story ten years later in Gulf War Two.

US M1A1 Abrams

mount a devastating 350-mile

Blitzkrieg to seize Baghdad.

After a nearly century-long weapons race,

the latest version of the Abrams tank

seems in a class of its own.

It proved outstandingly dependable during the epic race to Baghdad.

The tank has been upgraded not only with new guns and armour,

but with an array of new sensors and communications equipment

which make it superbly versatile on the battlefield.

The Abrams is immensely expensive,

but the US is wealthy enough

to buy and maintain substantial numbers.

The tank's 120mm gun

is the match of any other,

but what makes it lethal is the fire control system

and the speed with which it can fire aimed rounds.

Its Chobham armour and sloped design

have proved outstanding in combat.

The tank is very comfortable

and has excellent cross-country performance.

It was designed for the defensive.

Its gas-turbine engine

gives it excellent acceleration over short distances,

moving from one defensive position to another

while engaging the enemy with its superbly accurate armament.

But this is also its major weakness.

The immense amounts of fuel needed to keep it advancing rapidly.

Our tanks have to be refilled, in the offensive,

every four hours because, essentially, it's a jet engine.

A diesel engine is about every 24 hours.

So, as you're fighting your way forward, we found in Baghdad,

the Iraqis got out of the way and let the tanks go forward,

knowing that within four hours a fuel truck has to come up that same route,

and fuel trucks are a lot easier to kill than tanks.

So far, the Abrams tank still represents

both the state of the art and the status quo.

It may be heavy and thirsty but it is a formidable,

almost unbeatable, presence on the battlefield.

But it may be running out of enemies,

since they can't be counted on

always to play by your rules.

This is leading to a conclusion where

the US is so dominant on the technological end of the battlefield

that our enemies have simply decided they'll play a different game,

"I cannot match you in conventional fights in the open.

I will fight unconventionally in the city

at point-blank range and take away your advantages."

The end of the battle tank has long been forecast,

from the threat of anti-tank missiles,

anti-tank helicopter,

or precision guided weapons

which can attack where its armour is weakest.

And yet, each time,

new defensive solutions have kept it in business.

If there are no more opponents

attempting to better the Abrams tank,

then the battle tank weapons race may be over for now.

But different wars demand different weapons,

and the idea of a highly mobile,

well-armed and well-armoured war machine

has proved remarkably resilient for almost a century.

We can no more predict an end to the battle tank weapons race,

than we can predict the future of warfare itself.