Tank origin

In 1962, Joseph Williams and Clifford Bradley proposed a project of a tank with an unusual fighting compartment layout and a draft name AAT60. The gun was mounted in a small inhabited turret, and the crew members were placed below, in the basket. Only the commander was high enough—directly behind the gun. This design made it possible to reduce the frontal area of the vehicle to the values typical of tanks with an uninhabited turret. Even though the AAT60 project remained on blueprints only, some solutions were later applied to one of the milestone tanks of the American tank building, the M60A2.