The US Army needs tanks to win a war in the Pacific, but it knows the Abrams isn't the right tank for the job

• The US Army knows it needs tanks for effective combined-arms operations in Europe and Asia.
• But it also knows that rivals are building weapons that are potent against the aging Abrams tank.
• The challenge now is building a tank to face new threats in different regions for decades to come.

Can one tank still be good enough fight on two different battlefields? That's the dilemma the US Army faces as it grapples with designing a next-generation tank that can fight in both Europe and the Pacific.

Rivals in both theaters — chiefly Russia and China — have studied US armored vehicles and the way they're used and are fielding weapons to counter them. The Army's main battle tank, the M1 Abrams, now faces two main problems.