U.S. Army to replace Abrams with manned and unmanned vehicles by 2021

I think that vehicles that can be operated unmanned at certain times for certain tasks, (and unmanned need not be autonomous), would be a good idea. Certainly, if you are going to put troops on the ground on or near an objective, they will need protection, water, and ammunition - which armored vehicles can provide. But it seems that the technology of anti-armor weapons can advance faster than technologies for protecting armored fighting vehicles. You buy a bunch of MBTs or IFVs and you expect to continue using them for decades. You can add new armor on top of the old, you can add active defensive systems like Israel has been interested in, but the underlying vehicle is something you are invested in for a while. It seems much faster and easier for the developers of anti-armor weapons to iterate designs and produce systems that such vehicles cannot survive. Because of this, I would want to put a fairly conservative cap on how much money to spend on the underlying vehicle. By being frugal with the initial vehicles, you haven't bet as much if or when some disrupting technology suddenly renders your armored vehicles obsolete.

I don't see the Army replacing ANYTHING by 2021. We've been talking about replacing the M-16/M-4 for two decades... and still, I sign out my M-4 to clean every week.

Thank you for the techno share sir.