For steel beasts, the most dangerous habitat is urban. Tall buildings and narrow city streets are unfriendly territory for a 12-foot-wide tank that weighs 70 tons.
Yet, as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, and combat in cities and villages has become the norm, armor will have to prepare for more combat in built-up areas. But if the terrain can’t be changed, then how about changing the tank itself? Is it time for the U.S. Army to develop a specialized tank for urban warfare?
“A tank designed for urban terrain would have radically different design requirements than a main battle tank designed for open warfare,” wrote Michael McCabe in a June article for Armor Magazine.
Main battle tanks, which rely on long-range firepower and speed, “are willing to sacrifice extra armor to retain mobility,” McCabe wrote.
“In urban combat, however, the reverse is true: fights are at much closer ranges, mobility is measured by the ability to navigate sharp turns and tight/narrow streets, and speed can be sacrificed to retain maximum armor protection.”
In addition, urban terrain imposes unique demands on tanks, such as the ability to shoot around corners and engage targets at high elevation.
Armies have tried various street fighting vehicles over the years. In World War II, Germany stuck a 150mm howitzer on a Panzer IV medium tank chassis to create the Brumbar, while the Sturmtiger was a Tiger heavy tank with a 380mm rocket mortar. Yet their lack of a rotating turret proved a disadvantage.
“The Germans felt that tanks were better all-around for MOUT [military operations in urban terrain], and that developing AFVs [armored fighting vehicles] for that specific purpose was a waste of time, money and soldiers’ lives,” Douglas Nash, a retired Army colonel and an historian of the Eastern Front in World War II, told Defense News. More recently in the Ukraine war, Russia has fielded the BMPT Terminator, a T-72 tank chassis armed with four anti-tank missiles, two 30mm autocannon and two 30mm grenade launchers.
These older designs were just modified main battle tanks. McCabe — a designer and draftsman for the Newport News Shipyard — sketches a vision of a tank built from scratch for urban warfare.
Protection would be paramount. The vehicle would be heavily armored, with a V- or octagon-shaped hull to minimize mine damage and maximize shot deflection, plus cage armor to stop drones. To haul all that metal, the vehicle’s powerplant would resemble that of a bulldozer, favoring power over speed.
Describing McCabe’s tank as heavily armed would be an understatement.
“An urban tank would have a mixture of gun calibers for its main turret and side turrets/sponsons, since it will need to be capable of firing in multiple directions at once,” McCabe wrote. “Side turrets and sponsons will not necessarily require large-caliber guns, but they will require rapid-fire guns. These will often be fired around street/building corners and into buildings from the street to provide flanking fire in support of advancing infantry.”
Short-barreled guns would be chosen over traditional long-barreled cannon that can’t traverse in narrow streets. The urban tank would also mount a flamethrower for protecting its underbelly from attackers in spider holes or tunnel entrances, such as basement windows or manholes.
The ultimate result would likely be a slow, heavy vehicle reminiscent of “land battleships” such the 1920s Soviet T-35. Indeed, McCabe believes the tank “would benefit from having multiple turrets like a 1920s tank or a pre-dreadnought battleship.”
But those old, multiturret tanks proved unwieldy because the turrets had to be manned, resulting in a clumsy, cramped vehicle, McCabe pointed out. Today, remote-controlled weapons stations and unmanned turrets have become common, enabling a small crew to control multiple weapons. Unmanned turrets are also light enough to be placed more forward on the hull than manned turrets without causing center of gravity problems, enabling tanks to fire around corners without exposing the hull.
McCabe’s urban tank would have plenty of escape hatches for the crew to exit when the vehicle is knocked out. These would include both side and rear hatches, as limiting crews to top hatches “noticeably reduces their likelihood of escaping safely when bailing out under fire,” according to McCabe.
Tank designers may blanch at the thought of meeting all these requirements. Balancing firepower, protection and mobility has always been a challenge. Even an urban tank would still have limitations such as finding bridges that can bear their weight, not to mention the threat of drones. And the cost of manufacturing a limited number of specialized armored vehicles could be daunting.
Nash, a former armor officer, believes existing tanks can be modified for urban combat. An Abrams chassis armed with a 165mm demolition gun — like the one used on the old M728 combat engineer vehicle — plus a bulldozer plow and some machine guns “would be a formidable combo that could be used almost anywhere, not just in cities,” he told Defense News.
Regardless, McCabe believes that the development of urban tanks is inevitable.
“Urban combat without the presence of armored vehicles is extremely hazardous to the infantryman,” he wrote. “And the side which develops a purpose-built tank for urban combat will enjoy a marked advantage over one that continues to use main battle tanks.”
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