A history of the U.S. armoured forces from the advent of the tank in battle during World War I to the campaign to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991. This book chronicles the impact of mechanization on the U.S. army and U.S. Marine Corps. Despite its primitive beginnings, the tank revolutionized the battlefield in World War II. In the years since, additional technological developments - including nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, computer assisted firing, and satellite navigation - have continued to transform the face of combat. Every opportunity offered by advances in technology demands two things: the intellectual capacity to understand the opportunity and the courage to move in new directions. Each advancement has created the need for new countermeasures, further increasing the speed of technological innovation. In each chapter the authors focus on milestone events in armoured force history, and each chapter is written by an expert with a unique viewpoint on the topic at hand.