Thank God! They're finally working to preserve our armor history!

Thanks to Snafuperman for the pics!

The above pics are of the Abrams Tank Test Bed.  Consider it the Armata before the Armata was even a pimple on the face of a Russian engineer. 

The concept?

Absolutely awesome.

We could have had this during the early 90's (if memory serves) but didn't pull the trigger on this absolutely wonderful idea (how good is it...I think we should dust off the plans and get it into service!).

That was then and we deal with reality.

So even though we didn't move forward the above pics make my heart sing.

The National Armor and Calvary Museum somehow, someway got the funding to refurbish the old girl.  Now it can be properly displayed.  Now it can be properly documented by historians to preserve our armored past.

I'm beyond thrilled.

Now I gotta find that donation button so they can do the same to tons of other vehicles I've seen in pics being devoured by overgrown grass and rusting to hell.