The U.S. Army announced that GREYWOLF brigade’s Sol­diers fired the first round from the first new field­ed M1A2 SEP V3 Abrams Main bat­tle tank Tues­day at Sug­ar Loaf Range on Fort Hood.

3rd Bat­tal­ion, 8th Cav­al­ry Reg­i­ment, 3rd Armored Brigade Com­bat Team, 1st Cav­al­ry Divi­sion sent the first round down­range with the U.S. Army’s new ver­sion of Abrams tank, the ser­vice has announced.

Tues­day began the long process of con­duct­ing gun­nery for the unit on the new tank, accord­ing to Fort Hood Sen­tinel.

“What we are doing right now, we are just test fir­ing these weapons sys­tems,” 3rd Bat­tal­ion, 8th Cav­al­ry Reg­i­ment, Lt. Col. Nicholas Sin­clair, com­man­der, said. “We’re mak­ing sure that every­thing came from the fac­to­ry cor­rect­ly and doesn’t hurt the armored crew­man when we actu­al­ly go down the range fir­ing live rounds in our gun­nery progression.”

There are numer­ous upgrades to the new Abrams, but most of them would only be vis­i­ble to the most expe­ri­enced eye. All are designed to keep up with the enemy’s threat capabilities.

First Round on the new M1A2SEPV3. Hit the pan­el! @1stCavalryDiv @1stcav3bct #Hon­o­rAnd­Courage #OnThe­Way pic.twitter.com/irEwksMJEu

— 3–8 CAV (Warhorse) (@3rd8cav) August 18, 2020

“On the back left pan­el, there is an aux­il­iary pow­er unit,” Sin­clair explained. “This is a small­er engine that allows the tank to still per­form with­out run­ning the main engine. The main engine, when it runs, it runs at 17 gal­lons per hour. This runs at one gal­lon per hour. What that does is it extends our oper­a­tional reach. You don’t have to refu­el as much. It allows you to charge your bat­ter­ies qui­eter as well.

“The fires con­trol sys­tem is improved and updat­ed, and sim­pli­fied, as well,” he said. “So, think about when you have two tanks that are mov­ing over undu­lat­ing ter­rain. It’s very dif­fi­cult for us to hit that mov­ing tar­get. What this allows us to do is acquire it faster, and be more accu­rate with our fires. The oth­er thing that it does, is that it is sim­pli­fied. Where­as before, there were a few more com­po­nents and a few more pieces, these have few­er com­po­nents, and are eas­i­er to replace and eas­i­er to do main­te­nance on.”

The V3 con­fig­u­ra­tion, also known as the M1A2C, is the third ver­sion of the M1A2 SEP (sys­tem enhance­ment pack­age) Abrams tanks, which start­ed pro­duc­ing in 2000.

Accord­ing to the Army, the M1A2 SEPv3’s full improve­ments include upgrade of tank’s bal­lis­tic pro­tec­tion, an improved joint tac­ti­cal radio sys­tems, new aux­il­iary pow­er unit and improved amper­age alter­na­tor, slip ring, enhanced hull pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion unit/common remote switch­ing modules.

This ver­sion rec­ti­fies many of the space, weight and pow­er issues iden­ti­fied dur­ing Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom and will be the foun­da­tion­al vari­ant for all future incre­men­tal upgrades. In addi­tion to hav­ing improved sur­viv­abil­i­ty, the Abrams V3 can host any mature tech­nol­o­gy the Army deems oper­a­tional­ly rel­e­vant. Improve­ments focus on increas­ing the elec­tri­cal pow­er mar­gin, Vehi­cle Health Man­age­ment Sys­tems, inte­grat­ed counter-impro­vised explo­sive device pro­tec­tion, a new Aux­il­iary Pow­er Unit, embed­ded train­ing and an ammu­ni­tion data link.

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