Abrams industrial base.

• Author: Kojro, Chester A.
• Position: Readers' Forum

* In reference to the October story, "Over Army Objections, Industry and Congress Partner to Keep Abrams Tank Production 'Rot," the article carelessly conflates and confuses two separate issues: manufacture of new tanks and upgrade of existing tanks. The debate is over upgrading existing tanks to bring the entire inventory up to a common standard. The Army has a long history of penny-pinching foolishness on this matter.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, all Army modernization was prioritized around fielding increments to Force Package 1 (FP 1), then FP 2, and only then to FP 3 units, roughly "forward deployed," "CONUS active" and finally "Guard and Reserve," respectively.

Like most programs, the Abrams went through a series of improvements throughout its production, starting with the Ml, the IPM1, the M1A1, M1A2, M1A2SEP and M1A2SEPv2.

Early on, the Army reasoned that it was cheaper to slightly upgrade an advanced model than to fully upgrade an early model tank, so the tendency was to keep further upgrading ever smaller subsets of the...