The M1A1 Co-production Program is a joint venture between the governments of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

to produce parts and assemble tank kits for the

M1 Abrams The M1 Abrams () is a third-generation American main battle tank designed by Chrysler Defense (now General Dynamics Land Systems) and named for General Creighton Abrams. Conceived for modern armored ground warfare, it is one of the heavies ...

main battle tank at the Armored Production and Repair Factory in Egypt.

Background

The program and the plan for the construction of the co-production facility were advanced by Field Marshal Abd al-Halim Abu Ghazala as a way for Egypt to save money on the procurement of M1 Abrams main battle tanks while concurrently developing its own defense industrial base. Initially, the plan would was estimated to eventually shift 40% of the tank's production to Egypt to save money by taking advantage of the low cost of Egyptian labor. These savings would be realized over the course of a decade-long production run of 1,500 tanks, as well as the eventual use of the factory to produce other kinds of vehicles and serve as a repair depot for Egypt's fleet of

M60 Patton The M60 is an American List of main battle tanks by generation#Second, second-generation main battle tank (MBT). It was officially standardized as the Tank, Combat, Full Tracked: 105-mm Gun, M60 in March 1959. Although developed from the M48 Pa ...

main battle tanks. In 1984, Egypt signed a US$150 million contract with

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales and fifth largest in the Unit ...

for the construction of the factory, which was financed using American security assistance funds and portions of Egypt's annual US$1.3 billion in foreign military financing.

Operation

Starting production in 1988, the factory soon experienced numerous cost overruns, inflating the price of each tank to a level beyond the cost of buying complete tanks—the initial production run was estimated to cost US$2.7 billion versus US$1.9 billion for purchasing tanks directly from the United States via General Dynamics. Egyptian defense officials believed these additional costs were of no concern, stating that the factory "...serves other Egyptian goals such as economic development, modernization of the tank fleet, self-sufficiency in tank production..." However, in a review of the program, the General Accounting Office (now the

Government Accountability Office The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan government agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the s ...

) noted that Egypt's purported gains in self-sufficiency were limited because the United States, citing security issues, would not part with key pieces of technology needed to manufacture the bulk of the tank's components, including the

armor Armour (Commonwealth English) or armor (American English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences) is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, e ...

fire-control system A fire-control system (FCS) is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a director and radar, which is designed to assist a ranged weapon system to target, track, and hit a target. It performs the same task as a hum ...

, and

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

. Egyptian input in the production process was originally planned increase over the course of six phases, with later phases including the transfer of technologies needed to manufacture more advanced portions of the vehicle; however, the cost increases and the lack of technology transfers eventually halted the advancement of these phases, leaving the factory in a position where it only had the capability to produce the simplest parts of the tank and had to acquire all other parts from US-based companies. As a consequence, American officials estimated that Egypt would only be able to indigenously produce 19% of the tank's parts.

Today

In 2011, the co-production program has yielded approximately 1,130 Abrams tanks. The shipment of additional tank kits to the factory was suspended, along with the transfer of other military vehicles, in response to the Egyptian military's violent crackdown of

Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ('' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar, Imam and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Al-Banna's teachings s ...

supporters following the removal of

Mohamed Morsi Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa Al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012Tanks of Egypt