By GI Korea on February 18th, 2012 at 1:00 pm

Picture of the Day: Inside A M1A2 Tank

• Matt
  12:40 pm on February 18th, 2012 1

  Is it just me or is that one big boy?

• Ole Tanker
  2:37 pm on February 18th, 2012 2

  Matt,

  That guy is not very big. The M1A2 is pretty tight inside. Trust me, that guy is like 5″ 7″ 150 lbs.

• ChickenHead
  2:46 pm on February 18th, 2012 3

  Somehow, I expected driving a modern tank to be more like a first person shooter than a text-based adventure game.

  Is there room for a PDP-11 in a tank?

  “You have engaged the enemy. You have 40 round(s). Press 1 to advance. Press 2 to retreat. Press ENTER to shoot.”

• GI Korea
  3:49 pm on February 18th, 2012 4

  @1 – Also keep in mind that the soldier may also have a bunch of cold weather gear on as well which makes him look bigger than he really is.

• Conway Eastwood
  5:41 pm on February 18th, 2012 5

  Good ol’ ECWCS.

• Teadrinker
  8:47 pm on February 18th, 2012 6

  #3,

  This is an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mail box here. A rubber mat saying “Welcome to Zork!” lies by the door.

  >

• ChickenHead
  10:04 pm on February 18th, 2012 7

  “Sergeant, contact headquarters and get our orders.”

  “What’s our CompuServe ID again?”

• someotherguy
  10:42 pm on February 19th, 2012 8

  @3,

  That’s the Tank Commander (TC) position. You can see the C2 equipment in front of him. There are three other positions. To his left would be the loader who is responsible for opening the breech and putting the proper round in from the magazine. To the front left of the TC is where the gunner sits, it’s kinda of “down” a bit. There is a headrest + scope with a racing car looking controller that’s used to aim the main gun. It’s hard to describe

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/us_army_rolling_along/5787674762/

  and

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/us_army_rolling_along/5787674098/in/photostream

  If you look under the sight you can make out the two joysticks that are actually one unit, they rotate clock-wise / counter-clockwise and up / down. One of the trigger buttons activates the laser range finder and another one has the targeting computer adjust the trajectory for that range. Push a different button on the handle to fire the main gun.

  The driver sits underneath the front of the tank, his position is completely covered in armor. He relies on the tanks intercom to speak with the TC / gunner / loader (who servers as lookout / 240B gunner when not loading rounds). The inter-comm wire used to run near the turret o-ring and would sometimes get cut / broke. Don’t know if they fixed that with the A2/SEP version.

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/us_army_rolling_along/5787118729/in/photostream

  The driver drives the tank like a motorcycle, handlebars included. The steering control looks like a cross between a para-scope and the front of a Harley.

  Final picture is of the TC’s position with better lighting.

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/us_army_rolling_along/5787119215/in/photostream

  The TC can manually control the main gun if needed. This is the M1A2SEP with all the electronic upgrades including Force-XXI and BFT.

• someotherguy
  11:06 pm on February 19th, 2012 9

  Here nice picture from their site showing the frontal view with the different positions.

  http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150547690228404&set=a.10150528540578404.385156.135320098403&type=3

  From the side,

  http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/abrams.htm

  You can see how the gunner has to crawl into the front of the tank and lays down to drive it.

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