America’s M1 Abrams Has Lost Exactly 1 Tank Duel in 35 Years of Combat: A Russian T-72 Finally Did It

America’s M1 Abrams Has Lost Exactly 1 Tank Duel in 35 Years of Combat: A Russian T-72 Finally Did It

Meet the M1 Abrams Tank: The tank is named for Gen. Creighton Abrams, the World War II armor commander who later ran the Army, and it entered service in 1980 as the centerpiece of a force built to stop Soviet armor in Germany. That war never came. The wars that did come put the Abrams through five different kinds of combat across 35 years, and each one rewrote the threat it faced. The record of what happened, engagement by engagement, is more in…