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Any armour, along with supporting elements, is going to get chewed up in urban areas, no matter what the fancy pamphlets say. There is a website floating around about the Russian experience in Chechnya and how their armour performed in the cities, unfortunately I cannot find it at the moment, but from memory the results were not in favour of armour. Ultimately one would be better off going into built up areas with combined arms, and sucking up the casualties. Short of using robots, which have their own problems, that's all you can do, and a new medium tank will not solve anything.
Tanks are two dimensional weapons systems, and asking them to operate in the three-dimensional urban environment is foolish. Tanks are about mobility and survivability, and being mobility restricted to 2/3 of the battlespace, with your most vulnerable areas exposed to the 1/3 you cannot engage...well, think about it. Tanks are not suited to urban combat, and never will be. That is why fighter jets look so different, because they are optimized to the three-dimensional environment. Too bad the A-10 isn't slower...
Anyway, any discussion of the medium tank has to start with WHY? do you need it. What is it intended to do? The M1 is designed to slug it out with Threat tanks, with a 10:1 or better kill ratio. This requirement drove the design. So what is the medium for? How survivable? Air deployable, and if so, what are you willing to sacrifice to keep the weight down? What threats, in what environment, with what mission requirements? All these things ( and many more) drive the multiple compromises that occur with any AFV design. Survivability, mobility, firepower, crew protection, etc. are all issues that are often mutually antagonistic, and require some basis for striking a balance between them.
Right now, I'm not sure the Army really knows what it is looking for, because I haven't heard anyone articulate what the requirement is. Air deployability seems to be driving the bus, but no one seems to want to talk about the compromises that are being struck to attain this. I haven't heard anyon describe the combat environment that the medium will fight in, so I can't say if it is good or bad, needed or unneccessary. Time will tell I suppose.
(BTW, the M-8 Gun system went away because of concerns for crew survivability. The Defense of Western Europe involved large amounts of artillery, and the lack of protection for the M-8 crew was obvious. Coincidentally, wasn't there a kit of the M-8 Gun System (Achilles?) a long time back. I remember building one in the misty past.)
And I kind of like the beret. Impractical, but jaunty-looking!