Well my posts on the ABRAMS were meant for the new survival rating 7, in my last
Post #406 on the ABRAMS, I sought to relay the importance of DU armor as why I listed it on the earlier list in
Post #400 of tanks. Consider the ABRAMS in the second criteria I used for listed tanks again for the increased survival rating 7. This has been on my mind for years but I let it go for my own reasons. First DU armor is about 65% - 75%
denser then lead depending on the ref. also I've read on average DU is at least
2.5 times stronger by weight as compared to modern MBT Steel armor. So is there room for armor improvement if DU armor was never factored into the ABRAMS tanks in the game. Then I guess the answer is yes.
So to answer your question the first tank to have DU armor was the USA
M1A1HA (HA=Heavy Armor with DU added into the tiles.) in
June of 1988 assigned to units in Germany (You must remember East Germany was the only Warsaw Pact country to field Soviet manned T-80 tanks.). All previous versions M1/M1A1/M1A1IPIM relied on advanced Steel and Ceramic tiles only. M1/M1A1 would slowly be upgraded to the M1A1HA standard. In months before the Gulf War the USMC would "borrow" 60-80 M1A1HA tanks (Again depending on source.) By late 1995 early 1996 most to all M1A1 tanks would have DU armor tiles installed work was about to finish up on a 2nd Gen DU armor around the same time.
So key points about the refs...
Ref. 1 The armor protection level tables are a key to understanding this DU issue as development of the ABRAMS progresses.
Ref. 2 Page #47 is to the point for this discussion with related battle reports. You also get a really good preview of the book concerning the M1/M1A1.
Ref. 3 Backs up the rest but, what's interesting here is how the M1/M1A1 armor packages affected the UK and Germany armor decisions.
http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/abrams.htm
https://books.google.com/books?id=97...abrams&f=false
http://tanknutdave.com/the-us-abrams-series/
What happened to the M1A1HA was simply in the old question of
"what's in a name", as the M1/M1A1 tanks got upgraded they simply by numbers overtook the M1A1HA original tanks and just commonly where called the M1A1 or like the current USA version M1A1SA.
Regards,
Pat
Checked the web to include the proverbial Top 10 lists lots using DU rounds but as I thought the ABRAMS is the only one openly showing the use of DU armor.