From the Pershing to the Black Panther: Main Battle Tanks of the Cold War and After

The M26 Pershing entered American service in late 1944 as the intended replacement for the M4 Sherman and saw most of its combat in the Korean War. There its 90mm gun could defeat the Soviet-built T-34-85 tanks that the lighter Sherman had struggled against, which makes it the starting point for the postwar tank.

The Soviet PT-76 was adopted in 1951 as an amphibious light reconnaissance tank. Its 240 horsepower diesel also drives waterjets for swimming, and about 12,000 were built, so it shows a Cold War tank role that the heavy gun duels elsewhere on this path leave out.

Standardized in 1959 with a 105mm gun, the M60 became the main American and NATO battle tank of the 1960s and 1970s. It carries the story to the Middle East, where Israeli M60s met Soviet-supplied armor in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The T-62 entered service in 1961 as a successor to the T-55 and was the first tank in mass production with a smoothbore main gun, a 115mm piece with higher muzzle velocity. Used by Arab armies in 1973 and by Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the fighting exposed how vulnerable its armor was to modern anti-tank weapons.

West Germany fielded the Leopard 1 in 1965 after a joint tank program with France was abandoned. It put mobility and a license-built 105mm gun ahead of heavy armor, and exports and license production carried it across NATO and allied armies.

The British Chieftain was built for firepower and protection rather than speed, with a 120mm rifled gun that was among the largest fitted to any Western tank of its day and a low hull made by reclining the driver. Iran used Chieftains extensively in the Iran-Iraq War.

The T-72 was designed for cheaper mass production than the T-64, with a 125mm smoothbore gun fed by an automatic loader that allowed a three-man crew. About 25,000 have been built, and licensed production abroad made it one of the most widely fielded tanks of the era.

Challenger 1 entered British service in 1983 with composite Chobham armor that later influenced the American M1 Abrams. In the 1991 Gulf War British Challengers destroyed roughly 300 Iraqi tanks without a combat loss, and Jordan kept the type in service until 2023.

Japan introduced the Type 90 in 1990 with a Rheinmetall-derived 120mm smoothbore gun and an automatic loader. Only 341 were built, all for domestic use, and it has never been deployed overseas or used in combat, an unusual record for a modern main battle tank.

The French Leclerc entered service in 1992 after a joint program with West Germany broke down. Named for the Free French commander Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, it has served in French peacekeeping deployments and with the United Arab Emirates in the Yemeni civil war.

India fielded the Arjun in 2004 after a development process that stretched across decades of delays and cost overruns. Named for the archer-prince of the Mahabharata and carrying a 120mm rifled gun, it is used mainly in the desert terrain of Rajasthan.

The K2 Black Panther first entered South Korean service in June 2014 as the country's first entirely domestically designed main battle tank. Its hydropneumatic suspension lets the hull be raised, lowered or tilted, and Polish orders have turned a home-service design into an export.