The M2 Bradley, or Bradley IFV, is an American infantry fighting vehicle that is a member of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle family. It is manufactured by BAE Systems Land & Armaments (formerly United Defense) and entered service in 1981, with fielding beginning in 1983.
The Bradley is designed for reconnaissance and to transport a nine-man rifle squad, providing them protection from small arms fire, while providing firepower to both suppress and eliminate most threats to friendly infantry. It is designed to be highly maneuverable and to be fast enough to keep up with heavy armor during an advance. The M2 holds a crew of three: a commander, a gunner, and a driver, and can carry six fully equipped soldiers as passengers.
In the year 2000, the total cost of the program was US$5,664,100,000 for 1,602 units, giving an average unit cost of $3,166,000, equivalent to $5,841,000 in 2025.
Design The Bradley IFV was developed largely in response to the amphibious Soviet BMP family of infantry fighting vehicles, and to serve as both an armored personnel carrier (APC), and a tank-killer. Design began in 1963, and it entered production in 1981. A specific design requirement was that it should be as fast as the new M1 Abrams main battle tank so that they could maintain formation while moving, something which the older M113 armored personnel carrier, designed to complement the older M60 Patton, could not do.
Armament
The Bradley is equipped with the M242 25 mm autocannon as its main weapon. The M242 has a single barrel with an integrated dual-feed mechanism and remote feed selection. The Bradley carries 300 ready rounds in two ready boxes, one of 70 rounds – usually AP-type rounds, the other of 230 rounds – usually HE-type rounds, with another 600 rounds in storage. The two ready boxes allow a selectable mix of rounds, including the M791 APDS-T (Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot (with) Tracer), and M792 HEI-T (High Explosive Incendiary (with) Tracer) rounds. The 25 mm automatic gun is primarily used for clearing bunkers and firing on lightly armored vehicles.
The 25 mm automatic gun is not the weapon of choice for engaging tanks, but vehicle commanders, crews, and CALL and Army Infantry Center personnel have reported isolated instances in which the 25 mm automatic gun disabled older generation tanks. However, Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA) officials stated that, on the basis of their assessment of combat vehicles in the Persian Gulf war, for the 25 mm automatic gun to incapacitate a tank it would have to be hit at close range in its more vulnerable areas.
Subsequent ammunition developments resulted in the M919 APFSDS-T (Armor-Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot with Tracer) round, which contains a finned depleted-uranium penetrator similar in concept to armor-piercing munitions used in modern tanks. The M919 was used in combat during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It is also armed with an M240C machine gun mounted coaxially to the M242, with 2,200 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition. For engaging heavier targets, such as tanks, the Bradley has a TOW missile system onboard. It was changed from the M2A1 model to fire TOW II missiles. M2 infantry Bradleys have firing ports for a number of M231 Firing Port Weapons (FPWs; modified M16 assault rifles), providing a button-up firing position to replace the top-side gunners on the old ACAV, though the M231 is rarely employed. Initial variants carried six, but the side ports were plated over with the new armor used on the A2 and A3 variants, leaving only the two rear-facing mounts in the loading ramp.
Protection
The M2's base armor consists of an all-around 1 inch (25.4 mm) thick aluminum hull (mix of no. 5083 and no. 7039 alloys), heavily sloped in the front and mostly vertical on the sides and rear. The bottom of the hull front has an additional 0.375 inch (9.5 mm) thick steel applique plate, primarily intended to protect against mines. Both sides of the vehicle have an additional 0.5 inch (12.7 mm) of high hardness steel armor consisting of two quarter-inch applique armor plates spaced 1 inch apart from each other, the first spaced 3.5 inches from the aluminum hull. The turret, unlike the hull, is armored only in steel. The M2A1 version has identical armor but adds a gas particulate filter unit for NBC protection. This armor offers protection against threats up to and including 14.5x114mm AP.
The M2A2 upgrade adds additional armor. More steel applique armor is added to the vehicle's front, requiring removal of the trim-vane. 1.25 inch (32 mm) steel plates were added to the hull sides, replacing the earlier applique armor, as well as to the front and sides of the turret. The new armor covered up the infantry firing ports on the vehicle's sides. Spaced laminate armor was added to the hull rear, and kevlar spall liners were added to critical areas. Options for ERA were also added. These armor upgrades added about 3 tons to the vehicle's weight.
Countermeasures The use of aluminum armor and the storage of large quantities of ammunition in the vehicle initially raised questions about its combat survivability. Spaced laminate belts and high hardness steel skirts were added to later versions to improve armor protection, increasing overall weight to 33 tons. However, combat operations have not shown the Bradley to be deficient, with few losses. In friendly fire incidents in Desert Storm many crew members survived hits that totally destroyed lighter USMC LAV-25 vehicles.
All versions are equipped with two four-barreled M257 smoke grenade launchers on the front of the turret for creating defensive smoke screens, or firing chaff or flares.
In December 2018, the Army announced it would install an Israeli-made active protection system, the Iron Fist, on M2 Bradleys of one armored brigade to enhance protection of the aging Bradley against anti-tank rockets and missiles. However, the original configuration proved not to be sufficiently effective, delaying installation. Testing in 2022 of a reconfigured version called the Iron Fist Light Decoupled were more successful, and the Army intends to field a brigade set in 2025. Funding to equip several dozen Bradleys with Iron Fist was secured in early 2024.
Chassis The Bradley has a welded aluminum unit or monocoque structure to which the armor is attached, mostly on the outside. The suspension is by torsion bars and cranks. Six small rubber rimmed, divided road wheels on each side straddle the location flanges sticking up from the tread. These were originally of aluminum, but were changed to steel as vehicle weight increased. The steel treads sit on flat hard rubber tires.
Mobility The Bradley is highly capable in cross-country open terrain, in accordance with one of the main design objectives of keeping pace with the M1 Abrams main battle tank. Whereas the M113 would float without much preparation, the Bradley was initially designed to float by deploying a flotation curtain around the vehicle. This caused some drownings due to failures during its first trials. Flotation was no longer possible after armor upgrades.
Bradley squad and platoon organization
Since 1986, the U.S. Army has believed 9 to be the optimal number of individuals in a mechanized squad. Because of the limited room available for passengers in the Bradley, accommodating a full squad in Bradleys is accomplished by squad splitting.
A mechanized platoon consists of soldiers other than the squad members, and those soldiers must also ride in the vehicles. The original Bradley had room for 3 crew members and 6 passengers, called dismounts by the U.S. Army. An original mechanized platoon with four M2 Bradley vehicles included 12 crew and two infantry squads of 9 dismounts. Five other dismounts were also in the platoon and needed to be transported in the platoon's vehicles: the platoon leader, a radio-telephone operator, a medic, and two forward observers whose role is to call for support fire from artillery and aircraft. Together, they filled 35 of the 36 available spaces in the platoon's four vehicles. In the later M2A2 and M2A3 versions of the Bradley, the Army rearranged the interior stowage and created space for an extra dismount in each vehicle, resulting in spaces for 7 dismounts in each vehicle and a total of 40 soldiers in the four-vehicle platoon. With the extra men, the Army reorganized the Bradley platoon into 3 squads with 9 dismounts each. The Bradley crew of 12 stayed the same, thus there was room in the Bradleys for only one more dismount—the platoon leader. That new configuration did not leave room for the medic, platoon radio-telephone operator, or forward observers. In actual practice, however, units rarely have all the men they are assigned, so there is usually room for those extra soldiers.
Even with the extra space in the revised Bradleys, the squads were split among more than one Bradley. A split squad can be difficult to organize and control immediately after dismounting, especially when under fire and in complex terrain. The Army seeks to avoid that difficulty by requiring the GCV to carry the full 9-man squad. A four-vehicle GCV platoon will have room for 12 crew members and 36 dismounts. With three squads fully occupying three GCVs, the fourth GCV will have room for the platoon leader, forward observers, radio-telephone operator, and medic.
History
Production history
The M2, which was named after World War II General Omar Bradley, carries a crew of three and a six-man dismountable infantry squad.
The vehicle entered service with the U.S. Army in 1981, and 4,641 M2 variants have been produced since.
Even after the troubled development history of the Bradley,Diane L. Urbina. "Lethal beyond all expectations: The Bradley Fighting Vehicle"—in chapter 12 of George F. Hofmann and Donn A. Starry (editors) Camp Colt to Desert Storm: The History of U.S. Armored Forces, Lexington, Kentucky; The University Press of Kentucky, . additional problems occurred after production started, as later detailed by Air Force Colonel James G. Burton, who took part in the design and fielding process.James G. Burton, Col. The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press (1993). . Burton advocated the use of comprehensive live fire tests against fully loaded military vehicles to check for survivability. The Army and Navy agreed and established the Joint Live Fire testing program in 1984. When testing the Bradley, disagreements occurred between Burton and the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, which preferred smaller, more controlled, "building block" tests that could be used to improve the databases used to model vehicle survivability, as opposed to full up tests with random shots, which reduce the possibility of bias but produced little useful statistical data.
Burton insisted on a series of "overmatch" tests in which weapon systems would be fired at the Bradley that were known to be able to easily penetrate its armor. Burton saw attempts to avoid such tests as dishonest, while the BRL saw them as wasteful as they already knew the vehicle would fail. The disagreements became so contentious that a congressional inquiry was set up. As a result of the tests, additional improvements to vehicle survivability were added.
By May 2000, 4,641 M2s had been produced for the U.S. Army.
Saudi Arabia stated an interest in acquiring the Bradley in 1989, and began importing the vehicle in 1990. Bradley production concluded in 1995. A total of 6,785 M2/M3 Bradleys were produced, including 400 for Saudi Arabia.
Combat history