M60 Patton

The M60 Patton is a main battle tank serving the United States Army and United States Marines Corps, along with foreign armies including the Israeli Defense Force. The M60 has a similar shape and design of the M48 Patton medium tank, which has been serving the Army and Marines since 1953. Both are still in frontline service with the American forces, but are being replaced by a new main battle tank, the M1 Abrams.
 * Appears in: Army Wars: Red Tide,
 * Used by: United States Army, United States Marine Corps, Israeli Defense Force, Saudi Arabian Army, etc.
 * Weapons: 1 x 105mm M68 rifled gun, 1 x 12.7mm M85 Browning machine gun, 1 x 7.62mm M73 Browning machine gun

About
The M60 was first introduced in December of 1960, then, it entered service with the U.S. military. The M60 had the same-shaped turret of the M48, then in 1963, it was upgraded to the M60A1, with a larger turret that stores its main gun's ammunition in the back of the turret. In 1973, the tank made a debut with Israel's forces in the Yom Kippur War. In the 1970's, another variant, the M60A2 'Starship' went into production and service. The M60A2 was to mount a 152mm gun/missile launcher, capable of firing MGM-51 Shillelagh wire-guided, anti-tank missiles. However, the 'Starship' was phased out in the '80's. In 1978, the newest and most successful variant, the M60A3, was introduced and entered U.S. service. It included numerous upgrades such as a laser rangefinder, a tank commander's thermal imaging night sight, and a ballistic computer. More than 15,000 M60 Patton's in all variants were produced from 1960 to 1987 (the year of Army Wars: Red Tide taking place), a total of 27 years. In the early 1980's, a new main battle tank was introduced and entered U.S. military service, the M1 Abrams. The Abrams, with a 1,500 horsepower gas-turbine engine, a more powerful 120mm main gun, and more advanced armor protection, was designed to replace the M60 Patton, but the older tank is still in frontline service as of 1987.

Army Wars: Red Tide
The M60 tank will be ready alongside Delta Company to support American and NATO ground troops and lightly-armored vehicles whenever World War III starts.

Trivia

 * The aging M60 Patton tank has some advantages over its newer cousin, the M1 Abrams. The M60 has an escape hatch underneath the hull, while the M1 doesn't. And its (M60A3) thermal imaging system is quite better than that of the Abrams.
 * It's the favorite tank of Sgt. Jenny Garand.
 * In the real-world, the M60 tank fought in U.S. service for the last time in Operation Desert Storm in early-1991, with almost 200 of these tanks in the USMC fighting Iraqi forces in Kuwait. It retired in 1997, but then served as a training vehicle, until phased out in 2005.
 * As of 2016 in the real-world, the U.S. military is working on an upgraded package for the M60A3, called the M60A3 SLEP (Service Life Extension Program).