The M1 Abrams tank is an amazing piece of military hardware. Its main gun, a 120mm smoothbore, can deal with any armor on any known vehicle on the planet. Its armor is high-tech, classified, and unbeatable. Its enormous gas-turbine powerplant makes it almost airborne at top speed. It is a machine designed to fight other tanks, but it has shown itself to be pretty versatile at other chores, too, especially when those chores consist of revoking the birth certificates of bad guys.
Now, though, the M1 is getting something new, and I'm wondering why the heck someone didn't think of this thirty years ago. Aside from the main gun, you see, the M1 has three other primary weapons: A .30 caliber coax machine gun, mounted alongside the main gun; the tank commander's M2 .50 caliber atop the turret; and also atop the turret, the loader's M240 .30 caliber. But one unit has replaced the loader's machine gun.
A U.S. Army armored unit recently tested an M1 Abrams tank armed with a 7.62x51mm M134 Minigun in place of one of its secondary machine guns. The configuration, which looks like it was pulled straight out of an entry in the Call of Duty or Battlefield video game franchises, offers a boost in the volume of small-caliber firepower that an Abrams can pump out.
The 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division (1AD), based at Fort Bliss in Texas, shared pictures of the Minigun-armed Abrams, seen at the top of this story and below, last week on its official Instagram page.
“Tank crews from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division showcase their lethality during live-fire testing of the M134 Minigun, mounted on an M1 Abrams tank,” an accompanying post reads. “This cutting-edge integration of high-volume rotary firepower with heavy armor amplifies the brigade’s combat versatility, giving Ready First the tactical edge in close-quarters and complex terrain. As the brigade continues to evolve, innovations like this ensure dominance on tomorrow’s battlefield.”
The M134 minigun, bear in mind, has a rate of fire of 6,000 rounds per minute. That means that the multi-barreled death dealer spits out 100-count 'em, one hundred- .30 caliber American freedom pills every second. These guns are often hampered by the speed with which they go through ammo, which limits them to being vehicle-mounted; no matter how much we loved seeing Jessie Ventura wield one with an ammo backpack in "Predator," there's no way even he could carry enough ammo to get more than a brief cough out of the M134.
An M1 tank, though?
To go along with the M134’s high rate of fire, the Minigun installation tested on the 1/1st Armored Division’s Abrams also features a 3,000-round magazine. The gun itself is fitted with a Trijicon MGRS non-magnifying optical sight, which the Army started acquiring in recent years for use on M2 machine guns. MGRS sights have at least been evaluated by other branches of the U.S. military, including special operations units, for use on various types of machine guns mounted on ground vehicles and helicopters, as well as warships and smaller watercraft.
This may be the coolest thing I've seen in years. And, in the age of drone warfare, a minigun may be far more effective than the M240 at knocking down attacking drones.
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The purpose of any military, as I'm fond of pointing out, is to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. For the M1 tank, that "close with" has traditionally meant "within 3,000 meters." But more and more combat in the modern era is at closer quarters, as terrorist goblins tend to hole up in towns and cities; when an entire building starts sprouting an AK out of every window, why not have a weapons system along that can remove all of these windows in a few seconds?
Not to mention the intimidation factor of that famous giant zipper-sound, and the unbroken stream of tracers.
The US Army is returning to its primary role of finding and eliminating bad guys, and any old soldier will tell you, it's better to eliminate the goblins wholesale than retail. The M134 is tailor-made for just that. Good thinking!
Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.
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