A real M1 Abrams battle tank is a nightmarish vehicle. It weighs 70 tons. It's 26 feet long and 12 feet wide. It carries a 120-millimeter cannon that fires rounds that travel a mile-per-second: high-explosive shells, or armor-piercing uranium slugs. The M1 tank can climb obstacles three feet high with no trouble, cross ditches eight feet wide with ease, and roar down roads at 42 mph. It is an extremely lethal and frightening machine that can kill anything it can see.
It is also a horrible place in which to die. The Abrams holds four men. Three of them (the tank commander, the gunner, and the loader) ride in the crew chamber which is about the size of a large bedroom closet. The tank commander sits on a swivel-seat with his knees at the upper back of the gunner, who is crammed into a tiny ergonomic nook. The loader heaves shells into the butt of the 120-millimeter cannon, which juts like a dinosaur's rump into the turret cavity. The fourth man, the driver, lies on his back in a padded niche much the size and shape of a coffin. He steers the tank with a pivoting pair of black rubber handles from a metal post over his belly. He is not inside the turret with the other men; instead, he is squirreled away into the bowels of the machine and communicates by headset. Like the commander and the gunner, the driver's view of the world comes through "vision blocks," three rectangular blocks each the size and shape of a rear-view mirror.
Almost every visible surface within the chamber is covered with readout screens, switches, sensors, gauges, and maintenance monitors. The area around the tank commander's tall black stool has a weirdly shaped black joystick, a targeting scope, and two flat screens with buttons bearing cryptic acronyms. These big