Car enthusiasts milling around the floor at the Detroit auto show this week will get the first public glimpse of the Army’s new main battle tank, as the service prepares to roll out its M1A1 Abrams replacement five years ahead of its original timeline.

Rather than wait to field the vehicles until every last sensor and radio is determined, the Army cut the tank’s development time way down by getting the physical vehicle built and allowing the bells and whistles to be installed and upgraded as the technology evolves.

“The way we used to look at all these boxes…we used to take that box and install the computer,” Col. Ryan Howell, the Abrams’ project manager, told reporters Wednesday. “Today, it’s computer first, and it happens to be hardware second. So the box doesn’t matter.”