Nowadays, battle tanks are the backbone of most modern land forces and armies. They are combat vehicles, usually equipped with a large cannon and in-built machine guns. In camouflage colours, they usually move around on caterpillar tracks, have tremendous agility and feature an armour-plated body that protects them against ballistic assaults.
Making comparisons with earlier tanks is completely out of the question, because they have so little in common with today's military combat machines. In terms of performance, they are unequalled. Thanks to the trademachines.com website (and, yes, you can buy your own tank), we have selected the five most powerful main battle tanks complete with photographs.
Historically, the tank first appeared in World War I and the City of Lincoln was central to its development and manufacture. During that period, Russia was the leading country in the use of armoured cars and wheeled tanks. It will not come as much of a surprise that they were poorly designed in terms of both off-road mobility and firepower. Yet, the term ‘tank’ is still in use in English-speaking countries for their modern counterparts.
However, if you think that today's tanks are unstoppable, you would be incorrect. Without adequate air defence, or, more importantly, air supremacy, even the most advanced examples have proven to be quite vulnerable. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, for example, have decided against owning tanks as an element of their defence programme and the Dutch government actually gave away all 60 battle tanks that it possessed.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, could not part with his tank, which he drove during his Austrian military service; he bought it and stores it at his California home. In some respects, his attitude is understandable, especially when you consider that, at least the British combat vehicles, are equipped with a kettle, so that the crew is able to prepare tea, coffee, instant cups and the like.
In fact, there is an immense variety of tanks, such as amphibious tanks, airborne tanks, mortar carriers, and so on. The most common tank among them is the main battle tank, a characteristic feature of which is a rotating gun turret. It is one of the most heavily armoured and flexibly armed category of tanks in the world. For this reason alone, our list includes only this type of tank. While they all seem pretty similar in terms of horsepower, the weight is significantly different between different models. In order to combine both, we decided to use ‘horsepower per tonne’ as the key criterion.
