The M10 Booker began wonderfully—to equip the U.S. Army’s light infantry with a light, armored fighting vehicle to give a gigantic whack without losing mobility. A great beginning proved to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of contemporary military procurement.
Infantry Brigade Combat Teams had no intention of creating a vehicle that would provide mobility and covered fire to an unusually far reach. Their soldiers were occasionally presented with the enemy-held positions or light armor with scant supporting fire. That was to be bridged by the 2017 Mobile Protected Firepower program. Its purpose was outlined: bring a vehicle that could rapidly deploy, endure on modern battlefields, and offer infantry fire support where heavier tanks were unable to penetrate.
BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems built prototypes. In comparison testing, General Dynamics in 2022 was ordered to produce for $1.14 billion what became the M10 Booker.
The Booker M10 inhabited a gray area between an assault gun and a standard tank. It was armed with a 105mm gun, it weighed about four crew members, and it featured advanced battlefield technology like thermal scanning and digital communications. It weighed around 42 tons, too heavy but much lighter than an M1 Abrams. Both its module armor and active protection system were intended to keep it alive in close-quarter shooting, and its firepower provided infantry with the type of cover fire that infantrymen always dreamed of.
The Army made a conscious effort not to call it a “tank,” but rather to call attention to the fact that it was an infantry fighting vehicle designed to eliminate enemy positions and light armor positions and not to engage in mass tank warfare.
Audi’s high targets were established for the program. Four IBCT battalions of Bookers in production by 2030, or 504 vehicles, was the target. The first units would be around $12.8 million each, with mass production expected to bring them down in price. Deliveries would be phased in through 2025, 14 vehicles per IBCT, and spread through divisional support.
Production was spread across several states: turrets in Ohio, hulls in Michigan, and finishing in Alabama. Up to mid-2025, 84 had been contracted for, 26 shipped out, and roughly 80 built.
Issues soon cropped up. With survivability needs increasing, vehicle weight prioritization then came next. A relatively light, air-portable design in its initial design was too heavy for the main infrastructure, such as bridges on the 101st Airborne Division’s Fort Campbell. It also imposed a transportation capacity limitation of filling one vehicle per C-17 transport aircraft at a time, eroding the rapid-deployment capability that had been at the core of its design.
Maintenance was also an issue. Field-level maintenance constraints put some of the needed repairs in the hands of the Army’s mechanics, with the remainder being sent back to contractors. This put the question of the reliability of the vehicle for high-tempo, forward-deployed operations into question.
Even after all those years of expenditure and building, the Army finally abandoned the M10 Booker project in June 2025. It was during the Army Transformation Initiative that the commanders at last collectively decided the project was no longer in strategic reality. Officials begrudgingly conceded, at least for the time being, “We got it wrong.” Budget constraints, changing priorities, and readiness concerns over the years all contributed to the abandonment.
Even in its limited application, the M10 Booker has a lot to teach. Packing mobility, armor, and firepower into one tank is a challenging task for engineers, and compromises must be made.
The battlefield requirement that drove its creation has not yet come and gone. Light infantry units still have no deployable, tracked fire support. Whether the Army goes back to this next generation of technology or elsewhere, the M10 Booker will learn the lessons of this for decades to come.