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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

President Joe Biden’s administration has not set forth plans to make all Army tanks electric.

Alluding to the administration, former President Donald Trump claimed on May 1, 2024, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, that “they want to make our Army tanks all electric.”

A 2022 Army climate strategy plan, which does not mention tanks, calls for fielding an all-electric light-duty non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027 and fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.

None of those vehicles includes tanks.

No other plans have been released to go to electric tanks, said engineer Fabian Villalobos, a vehicle electrification and national security expert at the RAND Corp. think tank.

Several fact-checkers found no evidence to back similar Trump claims.

Trump’s campaign cited a June 2023 Bloomberg Law news article that said the military has a “grand vision of an all-electric fleet of tanks.” The article discussed the military considering the feasibility, but no specific plans.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Rev: Former President Donald Trump Wisconsin visit; 2nd trip to swing state

U.S. Army: Climate Strategy

RAND Corp.: Do Generals Dream of Electric Tanks?

Google Docs: Fabian Villalobos email 5/3/24

New York Times: Trump Misleads on Energy and Jobs at Houston Rally

PolitiFact: Trump said the Biden administration wants to ‘make our Army tanks all electric.’ That’s False

FactCheck.org: Trump’s False Claim That U.S. Military Moving to Electric Tanks

Bloomberg Law: US Army’s Electric Tanks on Hold as Battery Technology Develops

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Tom Kertscher joined as a Wisconsin Watch fact checker in January 2023 and contributes to our collaboration with the The Gigafact Project to fight misinformation online. Kertscher is a former longtime newspaper reporter, including at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who has worked as a self-employed journalist since 2019. His gigs include contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and sports freelancer for The Associated Press.