US Army goes on Christmas spending spree
Christmas has come early for the US Army as the service announced several contracts for key programmes on 21 December, totalling billions of dollars.
The pre-Christmas spending spree included contracts for hundreds of new generation M1A2 Abrams tanks, more Patriot missiles and modernised ‘Paladin’ self-propelled artillery systems.
General Dynamics Land Systems was awarded a $2.6 billion contract for the upgrade of 786 M1A1 Abrams to the new System Enhancement Package (SEP) v3 standard. The completion date is expected to be the end of 2020.
The army received its first SEP v3 vehicles in October, with six initial production examples. Improvements
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