Don't call it a tank!

 

That armored vehicle shown above is the rough equal of the famous M-4 Sherman tank that helped the Americans, the British, and even the Russians to defeat Germany and win the Second World War in Europe. Like the Sherman, it weighs close to 40 tons, and it actually has a more formidable cannon -- but it's not a tank! In its obsession with acronyms, the US Army classifies it as an MPF, short for Mobile Protected Firepower. You can add "vehicle," if you like, but apparently that's not required, even though the MPF is part of a program called Next Generation Combat Vehicle or NGCV. It's built by General Dynamics Land Systems or GDLS. 

I'm not making this up! As the Wikipedia editors explain with an apparently straight face: "In November 2017, the Army issued Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase and ... planned to award up to two Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) contracts for the EMD phase in early 2019. The expected buy was is MPFs. (To its credit, General Dynamics calls the vehicle the Griffin II.)

Under whatever name, the MPF fires a 105mm (four-inch) shell, far more powerful than the Sherman's 75mm, and sufficient to destroy an enemy tank in a pinch, much as the WW2 American tank sometimes battled the latest and heaviest German panzers, the Panther and the Tiger. But it won't be deployed to armored forces, instead being reserved for airborne, mountain, and "light infantry" units. That's presumably why the Army refuses to call it a tank, though it certainly looks like one.

The $1.4 billion contact was awarded last month for the purchase of 96 MPFs, though upwards of 500 are expected to be built.