It was supposed to mark the culmination of a decades-long pursuit. The M10 Booker—a long-awaited mobile protected firepower vehicle—had finally reached fielding. Testing was underway. Some 80 vehicles had been procured. The U.S. Army’s infantry brigade combat teams were finally getting the direct fire capability they had long lacked.

Then, without warning, the program was canceled.

The May decision stunned many, but for those who have followed the troubled history of light armor in the Army, it wasn’t entirely surprising. The M10 Booker, like its predecessors, was the product of bureaucratic compromise. It was heavier than planned, couldn’t be transported by a C-130 Hercules aircraft, lacked a robust support ecosystem and underwhelmed in terms of network integration.

Getting It Wrong

The M10 Booker was not the first Army modernization effort to collapse under its own contradictions. More than two decades earlier, the Crusader artillery system was canceled for many of the same reasons: excessive weight, flawed assumptions about strategic mobility and a development process divorced from real-world operational demands.

Like the Booker, the Crusader was technically advanced. It featured an autoloader, composite armor and unprecedented automation for a 155 mm self-propelled howitzer. But it was designed for a Cold War-era battlefield that no longer existed. By the time it neared fielding in the early 2000s, its 60-ton-plus weight and poor air mobility made it incompatible with then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s vision for a lighter, rapidly deployable Army. Its cancellation was not due to performance—it was due to irrelevance.

The Booker met the same fate. Marketed as a mobile, C-130 transportable direct fire capability for infantry brigade combat teams, the system never achieved those core promises. It was not airdroppable. It did not integrate into any existing networked kill web. It lacked a coherent concept of operations beyond “more firepower for light forces.” And perhaps most damning, it didn’t fit into how infantry brigade combat teams deploy—by truck, rail or rotary wing, not by C-17 Globemaster III assault drops.

Both Crusader and Booker are case studies in the disconnect between acquisition requirements and operational realities. The Army continues to define “validated” requirements years before prototypes roll off the line. These requirements harden into fixed assumptions, creating bureaucratic momentum that is nearly impossible to halt—until strategic conditions render the system obsolete before it’s even fielded.

This approach stands in stark contrast to how disruptive companies like Tesla develop platforms.

Tesla didn’t start with a perfect design specification approved by a dozen oversight boards. It built fast, failed fast, iterated constantly and treated software as integral to hardware. The result was a revolution in vehicle design, autonomy and systems integration—achieved in less time than it takes a traditional defense program to clear Milestone B, the decision that authorizes a program to enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

In contrast, Ford’s model mirrors the Army’s traditional acquisition system: compartmentalized development, rigid stage gates and optimization for compliance, not innovation. Programs are managed for bureaucratic safety, not battlefield survivability. This is how we end up with platforms like the Booker—validated on paper but outpaced by the real fight.

DoD must shift from compliance-driven acquisition to capability-driven experimentation. This means embracing rapid prototyping with iterative soldier feedback, digital engineering and open architecture integration, autonomy and software-defined vehicle systems, and disaggregated kill chains and drone-first design logic.

Getting It Right

The Army cannot afford another Crusader. It cannot survive another Booker. The next generation of light armor must be built not for an imagined doctrinal template, but for the drone-saturated, electronic warfare-contested modern battlefield.

The choice is clear: double down on yesterday’s processes or embrace the urgency of disruptive reform. If Tesla can reinvent the automobile in a decade, surely the Army can do the same for a 20-ton fighting vehicle.

Until the Army reforms its acquisition mindset—starting with requirements generation—the same cycle will repeat. Building for adaptation, not perfection, must become the rule.

To succeed, the Army must abandon outdated development models and adopt a fundamentally different mindset—one that prioritizes operational relevance over legacy templates. Requirements should be derived from the real-world needs of infantry brigade combat teams, not from Cold War-era doctrinal assumptions.

The Army must empower a lean, high-agency development team—modeled after the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office—with the authority to move quickly, prototype aggressively and learn through failure.

This team must simultaneously develop the entire ecosystem—not just the vehicle, but the drones, the software, the doctrinal framework and the full suite of logistical support elements, including recovery assets, resupply pods and refuel/rearm capabilities. Industry must be brought in early and meaningfully, with a focus on rapid iteration, soldier feedback and operational testing in contested environments.

Above all, Army leadership must build institutional consensus around the larger purpose. This is not about building another platform—it is about preserving the tactical relevance and survivability of the infantry brigade combat team in the drone-dominated, electronically contested battlefields of the 21st century. This isn’t just a question of equipment. It’s a question of mindset.

Modern Battlefield

Traditionally, armor has been defined by three principles: mobility, lethality and survivability. But the nature of each has transformed.

Survivability is no longer about thick steel. The war in Ukraine has shown that cheap, expendable drones can destroy million-dollar tanks with terrifying ease. Signature has become the new armor. To survive, a platform must be hard to detect, not just hard to kill. This means minimizing infrared and electromagnetic emissions, using masking and deception and operating in dispersed formations.

Mobility is now less about terrain negotiation and more about strategic lift and tactical agility in complex, cluttered environments. If a vehicle can’t be rapidly deployed on a C-130 or maneuver through narrow terrain, it risks irrelevance.

And lethality? It’s not just about the caliber of the gun. It’s about how fast it can complete the sensor-to-shooter chain—and how well a soldier can do so without exposing himself. This means pairing manned vehicles with drones and using autonomous systems to extend reach and multiply effect.

A New Approach

The M10 Booker was built for a battlefield that no longer exists. The next generation of light armor must be designed for the battlefield we now face.

What the Army needs is not another mini Abrams. It needs a paradigm shift—or what this author refers to as a Light Assault Tank Ecosystem (LAT-E). This isn’t a single vehicle, but a family of manned and unmanned platforms designed to operate as nodes in a sensor-driven, networked kill web.

At its core is a 20- to 25-ton manned assault vehicle, armed with an autocannon or a low-recoil gun and operated by a three-man crew. The vehicle is designed with an autoloader to reduce crew burden, and a low signature profile to enhance survivability.

Alongside this vehicle are uncrewed assets: loitering munitions, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance pods and autonomous resupply vehicles. All are built to work in concert, sharing data and executing distributed operations.

Most importantly, LAT-E is built for strategic mobility. These platforms are designed to be transportable by C-130 aircraft. Rather than rely on armor mass for protection, they rely on agility, dispersion and deception.

Each manned vehicle can launch and recover drones, which serve as its eyes and, in many cases, its weapons. The crew doesn’t just drive and shoot—they manage sensors, control drones and exploit the battlefield network in real time.

This is not about building another tank. It’s about building an integrated combat system for the drone age.

Future Fight

Picture this: a Light Assault Vehicle platoon is operating in dispersed formation, each vehicle spaced several kilometers apart. The platoon leader watches a shared network feed of drone imagery—thermal signatures, electronic emissions, movement cues.

One of his wingmen detects enemy drones probing the flank. The platoon leader doesn’t issue orders over the radio, nor does he move into visual range. Instead, he launches a kinetic drone to intercept the threat. Another loitering munition is dispatched to target a suspected enemy command node. The entire engagement—from detection to destruction—takes seconds.

No exposure. No delay. No voice commands.

Last Chance

The M10 Booker’s cancellation should not be seen as just another setback. It should be a wake-up call. Infantry brigade combat teams still need mobile, survivable firepower. But the solution must reflect the battlefield as it is—not as it was.

The drone war is here. The Army must choose whether it will adapt—or be left behind.

Col. Thomas Balish, U.S. Army retired, served 27 years, retiring in 2008 as assistant program manager-Maneuver, U.S. Army Office of the Program Manager-Saudi Arabian National Guard. He then worked for 10 years as an Army civilian. He now is president of LH6-Services LLC.