Engineering Spot

Video Credit:  Out Of Your Mind In the late 1960s, the U.S. Army began the search for a new main battle tank. The M48/M60 series of tanks had reached a design dead end, and the Army desired a clean-sheet design to incorporate new technologies, including a gun-fired antitank missile. The Pentagon initially tried to cooperate with West Germany on a new tank, MBT-70, but the project was sunk by technical problems and cost overruns. The development of the M1 Abrams is a classic study into how competing requirements can collide with one another. The trifecta of tank power, firepower, protection and mobility all required some level of compromise. The Army was willing to bend some requirements, particularly with regards to weight, to get a good tank instead of being unbending in a vain search for the perfect tank. The result is the most battle-tested main battle tank today, a tank that, with periodic upgrades, has stood the test of time. Since then the Abrams has been involved in a lot mo...

Video Credit:  Out Of Your Mind The UH-60 Black Hawk can be described using one word: survivor. Self-sealing, crash-capable fuel tanks were chosen to limit the threat posed by small-arms fire or hard landings. The tail rotor blades incorporated into the new design were made of ballistically resilient materials to minimize the chance of a tail hit, which would compromise control of the rotorcraft. The main rotors saw a similar treatment, and an armored cockpit was added as the helicopter began to take shape. Redundant systems were worked into the designs of the flight controls, hydraulics, and electrical system to increase the craft’s ability to remain airborne after taking fire. In order to support all that weight, the UH-60 leveraged two engines and a four-blade propeller, which offered a cruising speed of over 100 mph and the ability to lift as much as 8,000 pounds with 1,000 pounds slung underneath. The Black Hawk was also  designed  to be broken down and transpo...