I wonder when you see on this video that M1 misses the target. I do not see M1 firing, I see some gun firing and then some targets, but not M1 firing and missing.
And there is more. You and Dazzler seems to not have idea how tank gunnery on such range looks like. As well as authors of this story about missing targets.
So I explain again.
During such gunnery, tanks use inert training ammunition, which means there are no explosions when firing HE/HEAT/HESH, only visible thing is impact to the ground. Also only visible effect of firing training APDS and APFSDS is impact to the ground. This is because targets used in such gunnery are simple, made from paper or similiar material target shields with targets painted or printed on them. Even with binoculars it can be difficult to notice hit holes in them, especially if the range is above 1500m. So the tank can fire and do not miss the target, but people observing gunnery can confuse reality with their imagination about tank gunnery and claim that tank miss the target.
Now the bigger problem. I do not claim that M1 during these trails needed to hit all 10/10 targets. What I claim is, it could not miss all 10/10 targets. Fire control system is so precise and easy in use that this is just immposible. Unless we have incompetent crew in a tank.
Another factor is unreliability of sources claiming that tank missed it's targets, simply because they are made by people lacking knowledge.
And I doubt that Americans would send an incompetent crew that would not do a proper gun-sights zeroing and would be not capable to properly use fire control system.
The same is story with tank breaking down, who make such claims without any proof? M1 before being inducted in to service, needed to pass difficult reliability tests both in arctic and desert conditions. It's gas turbine air filters are considered as one of the best engine air filters up to this day. And I did not readed about any significant reliability problems of that engine in desert conditions.
If such things would happend then I have only 3 explanations, US goverment changed it mind and didn't wanted to sold the tank in the end, but to not disrupt difficult relationship with Pakistan, they just instructed crew to ---- up, or it was a sabotage, or crew was just untrained and incompetent, tank was not well maintained after transportation etc.
But overall it could not be a failure of design, and I must say, no other modern tank could failure such simple trails on it's own.
