Behold the U.S.’s new counterinsurgency tool in Afghanistan: the M1 Abrams tank, your ultimate in 30-year old precision firepower.

Increasingly distant are the days when Defense Secretary Robert Gates worried aloud about replicating the Soviet Union’s failed heavy footprint in Afghanistan. Under the command of General David Petraeus, the military’s leading advocate of counterinsurgency, an unconventional war is looking surprisingly conventional.

NATO planes are dropping more bombs than at any time since the 2001 invasion. Special Forces have been operating on a tear since the summer, to the point where Afghanistan’s president is saying enough is enough. The coalition is using massive surface-to-surface missiles to clear the Taliban out of Kandahar. And now the tanks are rolling in.

What do the tanks add to the fight? There’s some attempt at spinning their 120-millimeter guns as precision weapons, but one military official bluntly tells Chandrasekaran, “the tanks bring awe, shock and firepower.” Because “shock and awe” always works.

120 MM Diplomacy: Shock and Awe