Editing M60 Patton (section)

==IRL==
[[File:4EC947FC-1709-415A-8A77-873F40A7D520.jpeg|300px|right|thumb|An M60 in central Germany]]
The [[wikipedia:M60 Patton|M60 Patton]] is essentially a dressed-up version of the older M48 Patton, developed in response to the T-54A after the Brits got to examine one up close during the Hungarian Revolution. This led to replacing the WWII-era 90mm cannon on the M48 with a 105mm cannon to match against the Soviets' 100mm guns. They could've just put the same cannon and updated systems on the M48, and in the 1970s did that, calling that version the M48A5, but creating a new tank that isn't really new is more the U.S. Army's thing, you see.

The main reason for getting a new designation is that the M60 was supposed to be innovative, early designs planned on using composite armor and a combination gun and missile launcher (as seen on the Sheridan) mounted in a strange looking low profile turret called the Starship; ultimately pretty much all of these experimental features flopped in one way or another and so by the time the tank was fit for combat it was basically just back to where it started, an M48 with a bigger gun. With the elimination of the Light, Medium, and Heavy Tank classifications, the M60 became America's first Main Battle Tank. The M60 had been used throughout most of the Cold War until the introduction of the M1 Abrams that replaced it. The M60A1 which the Marine Corps used (and uses in the game) originally hit production in 1962, without a stabilized gun. In 1973 the M60A1 received an Add On Stabilizer (AOS), increasing its effectiveness, and the ancient Browning .30 caliber coaxial MG replaced with the M73 in 7.62mm NATO. This is the version of the M60 we see in Team Yankee with the US Marine Corps.

IRL a number of active-duty Army units got the semi-experimental M60A2, which only remained in service between 1975 and 1981.  The M60A2, whose crews called it the "Starship" due to the, for the time, extreme complexity and sophistication of the fire-control system for a low-velocity, short-range 152mm gun/launcher, which had available for it both a conventional 152mm HEAT round and the world's first through-the-gun-tube ATGM, the Ford Aerospace MGM-152 Shillelagh, the same main armament as the M551 Sheridan light tank that was used from Vietnam until Desert Storm.  1970s bleeding-edge technology was fragile and finicky and had lots of downtime, and the through-the-gun-tube missile launcher, commonplace though they are worldwide today, was enormously audacious for the disco era and the technology of the era was just not up to the challenge of bringing the designers' dreams into the real world, in the sense that the missile system was expensive and unreliable, and due to the limitations of the guidance system could not be aimed at targets within 730m, which was held by some to be beyond the maximum effective range of the unguided HEAT rounds available for the gun, though a 1980s fire control package with laser rangefinder and ballistic computer could have addressed that shortcoming.  It is ironic that in the present day it'd be cheap and trivial to give the "Starship" and the Sheridan the same thermal vision, laser rangefinder, and computerized fire control suite 21st Century MBTs get, and create for it a laser-guided or fire-and-forget 152mm through-the-gun-tube long range tandem-charge top-attack antitank missile for the M60A2 and Sheridan and it'd actually work as advertised, and the Sheridan in particular would be more viable in 2020 than it was in 1964.  Be that as it may, in the late 1970s the M60A2 was widely regarded as a failed experiment.  By the spring of 1981 all remaining M60A2s were converted to the M60A3 standard.

Speaking of the M60A3, it was introduced in 1978 and stayed in service in Army National Guard units until 2005.  It was the good old M60A1 with the 1975 RISE enhancements, plus true passive thermal night vision sights for the commander and gunner replacing the distinctive enormous infrared spotlight bolted on top of the turret you see on M60s, M60A1s, and M48s, a laser rangefinder, and the same terrifyingly lethal and efficient computerized fire control suite as early M1 Abrams tanks.

There were plans in the 1980s for further enhancements to keep the M60 in service longer due to teething problems with the earliest M1A1 tanks with the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore gun.  Ideas for the hypothetical M60A4 ranged from shoehorning a 120mm gun into the turret--theoretically impossible, but Thailand and Turkey now field the M60T variant cobbled together for them by Elbit in Israel--to a variant with a smoothbore 105mm gun that could use the same ammunition but get higher velocities, to a variant with explosive reactive armor tiles, which remains in service in Israel with reserve units, who call it the Mag'ach 7.

Even after that, the M60 stayed for a while, proving itself more than viable against Iraqi T-55s, Type 69s and T-72s during operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, though that may have had more to do with crew proficiency than the vehicles themselves. The US finally retired its last M60s in 2005, and the M278 Combat Engineer Vehicle (a repurposed M60) is still soldiering on with the US Army Reserve and Army National Guard forces. Many armies still use them, namely Turkey and the Republic of China (Taiwan), along with Israel. The still-serving M60s have been modified and updated in a wide variety of ways; one version comes with 25mm auto cannons in place of the M2 machine gun and a 120mm cannons. Very lightly modified units are serving in the Syria conflict with better success than more advanced Leopard 2 tanks, though it should be noted that air superiority, artillery fire and near constant drone overwatch help a lot on this count.

Armor was around 130-200mm of RHA if memory serves, and it was PLANNED to have "Siliceous Cored Armor, but...  Some were eventually fitted with explosive reactive armor tiles on the front and sides of the turret and the front of the hull; first seen in Israeli service during the 1982 Lebanon dust-up, by the late 1980s it was also being fielded extensively on American vehicles which went on to perform quite satisfactorily during the Gulf War. Since Israeli usage was already widespread by Team Yankee's 1985 start date we can expect that future expansions will eventually feature that variant as was done for the T-64, and given that AFVs that didn't see service until well into the 90s (not to mention numerous experimental AFVs) are already playable it's likely this option will also extend to American forces (most importantly it offers Battlefront Miniatures the opportunity to earn some additional profit).

The M60 would have been unquestionably the American workhorse tank if World War III had broken out in 1985. It might have been old, and based closely on the even older M48, but it was still a potent threat for the Warsaw Pact forces. The U.S. Marine Corps had not received any M1 tanks yet in 1985, and neither had the U.S. Army Reserve or the Army National Guard. The M60 would have been the one doing most of the work, even if the Abrams was newer and has gotten so much more hype in the years since.

{{US Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{Israeli Forces in Team Yankee}}
{{Iranian Forces in Team Yankee}}

[[Category:Vehicles]]