Why Houthi rebels are kicking the crap out of the world’s best tank

The M1A2 Abrams is arguably one of the best (if not the best) tank systems in the world today. It's the main battle tank of the United States, along with several of its allies — including Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom deployed a number of the tanks in its intervention against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is not having the success they expected to have.

It's been three long years for the Saudi military and the coalition it's leading to take on Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. Almost as soon as the Saudi "intervention" (aka "invasion") of Yemen began, the Kingdom started asking U.S.-based contractor General Dynamics for upgrades to the tank. They also ordered replacements.

A quick YouTube search will show you why.

Houthi rebels posted a lot of these videos showing the M1A2 getting wrecked by simple anti-tank weapons. In the videos above, that weapon is Tosun anti-tank guided missiles, an Iranian-built variant of a the Soviet 9M113 Konkurs ATGM, which uses a trailing wire system to guide the projectile.

At just 32 pounds, this Iranian ATGM can hit a Saudi M1A2 from two miles away. The current M1A2 defense system can't really defend against this simple kind of attack. Reactive armor can help and there are M1 upgrades that could possibly further help, but complete, reliable 360-degree protection doesn't exist in this family of tanks.

But don't think because it's not working out for the Saudis, the same fate would await American tank crews.

For starters, Americans won't just abandon their tank and bolt at the first sign of trouble.

The thing is that there's nothing wrong with the tanks themselves. They could stand the upgrade package given to U.S. M1 tanks, maybe some of that depleted uranium armor, or maybe a tank protection system like the one Israel developed for its tankers. The problem Saudi Arabia has with its tanks is how they're being used.

In the above videos, you could see tanks being destroyed that were completely alone. They were left out in the open with no infantry support. The minimal amount of 360 protection a crew can give themselves is to actually look around. We may never know what the crew was doing in there but what they weren't doing was being aware of their surroundings.

So of course some Houthis are going to come up and shoot them with an anti-tank missile.

Maybe leaving your bright red Igloo cooler on the side of it isn't a great idea either. Just throwing that out there.