No longer beholden to felling thousands of trees for constructing bridges to cross an obstacle, the Army deployed a modified M60 Patton tank in the 1960s to do the job. A product of the Cold War, the M60 Armored Vehicle Landing Bridge (AVLB), combined the chassis of the M60 with that of a vehicle launched bridge system. The armored M60AVLB (up to 109mm in the hull front) has a top speed of up to 48 km/h and upon reaching its destination, can then deploy a 19m scissor bridge as fast as three minutes. The bridge can support vehicles of up to 54 tons, and, when done, can be retrieved in a minimum of 10 minutes.
The M60 AVLB has been a mainstay for both the Army and the Marines ever since, as well as seeing sustained service in other countries. Its inability to keep up with the speed of the M1 Abrams tank on the field (up to 70 km/h) as well as its deployed bridge not being able to support the weight of an Abrams tank, led the Army to begin development of its replacement in 1983. This saw General Dynamics Land Systems win a contract in 1994 to develop a new bridgelayer. It would take until 2003 when the first production model arrived: the M104 Wolverine Heavy Assault Bridgelayer.
