The M1 has a long and illustrious history. When the project was started it looked like another one of the army's failures, turbine trouble, gun trouble, ammo stroage trouble, ect... Now it is the worlds leading tank along with the Merekava M.k4, Leapard 2, and Challenger 2. This topic is on the M1 and its devlopment from a probable failure to the worlds leading tank.
The M1 progarm was started in 1979 with the 9 test bed units called the XM1, problems started right off the bat, trouble with the turbine and sand, the sands fine particles would eat away the turbine and would need to be replaced in a few hours of operation, the the 105mm rifle gun strated in with having accuacy and ammo trouble, the ammo storage then wasn't working properly the the doors would jam and the blowoff panels didn't blow.
This was all fixed by 1980 and was shown at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and the high brass agreed to its production the XM1 hit the production line as the M1 it had spaced armor, new thermal sights, and turbine enegine. Its upgrade or newer version the M1A1 and M1A1HA where bettered with a larger main armerment, better 2nd generation thermal, Chobam composite armor, and a state of the art Fire Contol System. The M1A1-HA was a M1A1 with heavly armored plates attached to it. The M1A1 was produced in 1982. The M1A2 was put into planing and made it into the approval stage but was never poduced and the kits where sold the allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The M1A2 SEP (System Enhancement Package) is a new design of the M1A1 with a new thermal sight and better FCS, and inergrated computer system, alot of the A2's are built on M1A1 platforms or are built by General Dynamics. The M1 Grizzly is a engineering vehicle using the M1 chassis and it has a shovel and hydralic lift on it to dig trenches of defeat anti-tank barriers.
M1 
M1A1 
M1A2 SEP
Crew Compartment of the M1A2 
M1 Grizzly
