Divesting the Past to Secure Tomorrow’s Battlefield

Commentary by Benjamin Fernandes and Benjamin Jensen

Published August 27, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave the Army a clear directive-design a leaner and more lethal force with better long-range precision fires, air and missile defenses, cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, and counter-space capabilities. These are expensive priorities requiring significant changes to the Army's force structure. The Army cancelled the M10 Booker and procurement of older attack helicopters (AH-64D Apache) but plans to develop a new manned tank; however, Army leaders should consider substantial divestment of manned attack aviation and manned tanks. Generals and soldiers, including the authors, love Apache attack helicopters and M1 Abrams tanks, which represent raw combat power and U.S. technological dominance of the twentieth century. However, today's anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) threats, proliferating advanced air defenses, and other threats in every domain demand rethinking the Army's force structure at every level. Winning modern combat requires lethal, relatively cheap, strategically agile (i.e., between continents), and tactically agile (i.e., on the battlefield) weapon systems that industry can quickly produce in large numbers. Agility becomes especially important in an unpredictable world where threats and the president determine where the Army operates, not the Army's desire or force structure. The next adversary could be cartels, China, or something else.

Abrams and Apaches Lack Strategic Mobility

While the Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters provide tremendous lethality on the battlefield, their slow movement between continents overly burdens the force with poor strategic mobility. A C-17 cargo aircraft can only carry one Abrams tank because it weighs more than 30 Ford F-150 trucks. Apache helicopters are easier to carry; three fit on a C-17, but loading and unloading remain relatively slow and cumbersome due to the disassembly and reassembly required. These physical requirements force the Army to rely on sealift, which easily requires 30 or more days to transport equipment to Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean investment in cyber (e.g., Volt Typhoon), long-range fires (e.g., Oreshnik), and anti-ship capabilities (e.g., DF-21 anti-ship missile) could substantially lengthen this strategic transportation timeline and attrit forces in transit under wartime conditions. Compounding this problem are some tactical, intra-continental mobility concerns for the Abrams, such as its ability to cross most bridges due to its weight and massive logistics requirements-around a half-mile per gallon of fuel. Ultimately, adversaries could achieve a fait accompli or, more likely, substantial gains before a critical mass of Abrams or Apaches arrive on the battlefield.

Apache Helicopters Are Increasingly Vulnerable

Attack aviation provides flexible close air support in theaters under Army control, but modern surface-to-air missiles make Apaches vulnerable, and there is no easy fix because physics favors anti-air weapons over helicopters, which must defeat gravity and beat the air into submission. Investing millions to upgrade existing airframes will not fundamentally mitigate these vulnerabilities, and Apaches are one of the most expensive Army platforms to operate and maintain. Long-range artillery and missiles have the potential to provide more cost-effective fire support to combat units across a wider range of environmental conditions with far less vulnerability. Although they lack an Apache's tactical mobility, mobility only matters if the platform survives and is available.

Pivoting to Unmanned Ground Combat

Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicles can deliver Abrams-comparable firepower at less than half the weight and cost, as the Army Science Board working with the Ground Vehicle Systems Center demonstrated in 2016. A C-17 can carry a pair of robot tanks-each two-thirds the size and less than half the weight of an Abrams-improving intercontinental responsiveness and likely reducing the risk to human crews. Alternatively, cheap and expendable ultralight ground combat vehicles with missiles or small aerial drones can provide exponentially greater global mobility; however, their combat capabilities are less certain. Separately, aerial drones have the potential to be more effective than Apaches. Today, all robot systems require remote pilots to ensure effectiveness, which creates at least some vulnerability to electronic attack, as demonstrated in Ukraine and Africa. These problems are different, but potentially easier and less expensive to solve than the global mobility and cost problems created by manned tanks and attack helicopters. Appropriate training and experimentation, along with advances in automation and electronic warfare tactics, offer ways to ensure the effectiveness of robotic weapons-as Ukraine demonstrates.

C-17 Space Claim for C2 Vehicle

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