>Also, it's a jobs/pork barrel program. Congress keeps ordering tanks that the Army puts into storage because the M1 is a beast of a machine that keeps a lot of people employed. The US manufacturing base is pretty depleted, and ordering tanks you don't necessarily need is a good way to keep the skills and tool chains you could need in the future around.
Sure, that's nothing new to anyone who's familiar with Cold War economics. The Soviet Union was able to keep its economy crawling along without sanctioning free enterprise by making enormous investments into collectively-owned (i.e. state-owned) products like nuclear submarines and combat aircraft. Turns out you can achieve much the same goal but also benefit the people if you put that effort into state-funded infrastructure. Whether the US body politic will support reducing M1 Abrams production in favour of fixing the USA's crumbling infrastructure is again a separate discussion.
Sure, that's nothing new to anyone who's familiar with Cold War economics. The Soviet Union was able to keep its economy crawling along without sanctioning free enterprise by making enormous investments into collectively-owned (i.e. state-owned) products like nuclear submarines and combat aircraft. Turns out you can achieve much the same goal but also benefit the people if you put that effort into state-funded infrastructure. Whether the US body politic will support reducing M1 Abrams production in favour of fixing the USA's crumbling infrastructure is again a separate discussion.