Alternatives for the U.S. Tank Industrial Base

The shrinking of the U.S. military, coupled with the disappearance of a longtime foe and the unprecedented peacetime investment in modern weapons that occurred in the 1980s, has led to sharp reductions in the planned purchases of military weapons. In particular, the Bush Administration did not plan to buy any new tanks for U.S. forces for the next 15 or more years. Without U.S. purchases, the U.S. industrial base dedicated to producing tanks could close and would eventually atrophy. The tank industrial base in this country involves facilities operated by several major contractors that are supported by some 18,000 subcontractors and suppliers. Some skills and machines used in producing tanks would not be maintained in the absence of ongoing tank production and could not be regained quickly if lost as a result of disuse. Uncertainty about future requirements, together with the delays associated with reassembling the skilled workers and lines needed to produce tanks, may argue for maintaining some U.S. capacity to produce tanks even if no new tanks are needed now. Maintaining such capacity by keeping the tank line open, however, would cost a minimum of $250 million annually after 1995 and could cost up to three times more. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examined three ways of preserving some or all of the components of the tank industrial base. The first would retain no active components but would preserve the plants and lines that are used exclusively to produce tanks or tank parts. The second alternative represents the other extreme and would keep the entire industrial base active by producing a small number of new tanks each year. The last alternative would keep most of the base active by upgrading older models of the Abrams Ml tank to the latest and most capable model, the M1A2.