Nearly every armor force in the world has fielded, is fielding, or is designing a 3-man tank. This paper deliberately steps away from the purely technical argument associated with this effort. It seeks to find out if the United States Army is considering the human dimension and ergonomic factors during the design of a future 3-man-crew tank to adequately address the problems associated with extended operations. The paper begins with an extensive examination of the loader's duties on a tank within the context of extended operations. It examines duties on leader tanks, vehicle security, crew member replacement, and degraded operations to establish a contextual understanding of human dimension issues associated with continuous operations. The second chapter examines the army's MANPRINT effort, the former Soviet Union's human dimension integration effort, compares the Armored Gun System SMMP and TEMP, and concludes with an examination of successful soldier-in- the-loop testing using the MWTB and UCOFT. The third chapter addresses emerging technologies likely to be incorporated into the future main battle tanks, again within the context of continuous operations. The study concludes by introducing a fightability standard for emerging technologies and makes recommendations for improving early user involvement in the development of systems.

ADA 293406 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)