Military takes Charge

I see that the military has taken charge in Egypt, and from what I've read, the military is trusted by the Egyptian people. The difficulties of forming a democracy from a dictatorship are well known, although I'm not sure if Mubarak was a dictator in the classic sense. He did outlive his welcome, though. It's best to change diapers and politicians often, for the same reasons.

However, there's this one picture that keeps showing up and it brings back memories for old tankers like me.

That's an M60 series tank, the last type that I qualified on. I can't tell if it's an M60A1 or an M60A3, but it's almost impossible to tell those types if you're not in the turret. The M60A3 had a much improved fire-control system, with wind sensors and an improved computer. It was the last of the old M60 series before we transitioned to the M1 series tanks. I was still tanking when the M1 came out, and the gunners compartment of that tank looked like a fighter jet cockpit to us old diesel-breathers. We called the M1 tankers "Star Wars" tankers because of all the electronic devices they had at their command. However, if the tank didn't work, it didn't work and they pulled it off the line.

The old M60 series had redundant systems, in the form of two main sights and other devices that helped us use the tank when things started going wrong. It was called "degraded gunnery" and let the tank keep fighting when stuff started breaking. We even had a small blasting device that would fire the main gun if all of the electronics were dead. We didn't need all those electronics to fight and could continue the fight when things started breaking. We were "Jedi tankers" and the force was strong with us.

Nowadays all my tanks are statues. You find them parked at places like Fort entrances, VFW halls, and Honor Parks in small towns. I climbed up on one just a couple of months ago and identified it as an M60A3 because it had a fitting to mount the wind sensor on the turret, which wasn't a feature on the A1 series.

All my tanks are statues, so when I see one being used, I perk up. I'm glad that the Egyptian military is a friend of the people.

Note: Before I get a bunch of comments, the M60A3 had three identifiers from outside the tank. First, the wind sensor on top of the turret. Second, the M60A3 had a laser rangefinder, and the rangefinder bubble on the port side of the turret was welded shut. Third, the main gun on the A3 had a thermal shield to protect the gun from the sun. A main gun barrel has a lot of metal in it, and when the sun moved across the sky, the tube would heat differently on the sunny side vs the shady side. This produced a phenomena we called "tube droop" and would affect long range ballistics.

And yeah, on old tanks, things were identified by port and starboard. Go figure.