The Pentagon is looking to speed up the delivery of the Abrams tank to Ukraine by refurbishing older models instead of manufacturing new ones.
US officials told The Associated Press that the new plan is to send Ukraine the older M1A1 version that can be pulled from US Army stockpiles. The officials expect the M1A1s could be delivered within eight to 10 months.
The initial plan was for the US to manufacture 31 new M1A2 Abrams tanks, which wouldn’t have been delivered for years. The new plan still does not get the tanks into Ukraine’s hands before the spring, when the US is hoping Ukraine will launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Ukrainian troops have been training on the German-made Leopard tank, but it’s not clear when they will start training on the Abrams. According to Poland, at least four Leopards have been delivered to Ukraine, but Berlin has said it’s struggling to put together more than a few dozen tanks for Kyiv, far fewer than what Ukrainian officials have been demanding.
President Biden’s announcement in January that the US would provide Abrams to Ukraine came after Pentagon officials said sending the tanks to Ukraine would be impractical. But Biden’s decision was made to convince German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to send Leopards and sign off on the export of the German-made tanks from other countries.
Scholz previously ruled out sending Ukraine tanks and explained his reasoning by saying he was trying to prevent a direct war between NATO and Russia. But the US and its allies are less concerned about escalation and continue to ramp up support for Kyiv, including Poland and Slovakia pledging Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets.
At the rate we are going, we are going to go head to head with Russia.
Dear Planet Earth:
Thanks for all the good times, in between our endless wars….
One country sends peace delegates the other country sends tanks.
One country invaded another to take their land.
The invaded one is trying to defend itself but self defense is antiwar according to the majority here.
How about Putin gets F out of Ukraine? When are you going to join that petition? Never, since you support the invasion and annexation of Ukraine.
And one country allowed itself to be used by the west to weaken Russia. The same country that the west explicitly told that they would only support to a point and that point was that their support didn’t provoke Russia into a conflict with them and other NATO members. And that country is willing to continue to sacrifice its citizens and allow its country to be destroyed even though there is no chance of “winning” short of a world war breaking out. I face reality. Russia isn’t leaving Ukraine, so I comment on that reality I’ve said the invasion was inevitable because the bait was going to be continued to be put out there until Russia bit. It’s been going on for 30+ years so I think Russia realized that inevitability and reacted. I agreed with Russia annexing Crimea for obvious reasons but have stated that they should give up any other land taken since the invasion started. You on the other hand are willing to let Ukrainians continue to die and allow their country to be destroyed.
I don’t suppose that the Abrahms are armed with non-DU shells?
It’s armed with weapons (main gun is a 105 mm rifled or 120mm smoothbore, secondaries are .50 and 7.62 machine guns) that can fire DU or non-DU shells.
The M1A1, while formidable, is only as good as its crew and- just as importantly- its supply and maintenance train. We already know the Abrams can be taken down- there are plenty of examples from the Middle East to bear witness- and the Russians will be using far more advanced weapons than those the M1 has previously faced. Add to this the lack of Ukrainian air superiority and you’ve got a recipe for an awful lot of fine tanks (with barely trained crews and little fuel or spare parts) to be little more than firing range targets.
“We already know the Abrams can be taken down- there are plenty of examples from the Middle East to bear witness”
A total of nine Abrams tanks have been destroyed, ever.
Of those nine, precisely zero were destroyed by enemy action.
” zero destroyed by enemy action”
does that mean that nine abrams tanks all died of a broken heart?
They were destroyed to prevent their capture (or destruction).
Of course, it’s been quite some time since the Abrams has seen much combat, and presumably the advances in e.g. man-portable anti-tank weapons affect it in the same way (although perhaps to some varying degree) that those advances have affected other countries’ tanks. All weapons and platforms become obsolete at some point. But as of the last time this one was used, it hadn’t become obsolete yet.
Just; again; Saudi Arabia has been using M1A2 tanks in Yemen since 2016; and has suffered some pretty significant losses, between 20 (reported as of 2016) to “over 40” mentioned in other stories; enough that they had to purchase a sizeble order of replacement tanks from the US – and the Houthi’s aren’t exactly a “peer force”; more like a guerrilla army. And again, in some stories, the losses are credited to the use of handheld ATGMs (Kornets in particular)
Not quite. 9 US Abrams have been destroyed; the numbers from Yemen, for the M1s deployed by Saudi Arabia, are considerably worse – more than 40, depending on which news report you want to believe; and those are the M1A2 models, not the M1A1. see https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-tactical/why-are-houthis-rebelling/
Of course, this being a very pro-US-military link, all the blame is placed on poor Saudi training and tactics; but it’s interesting that they attribute many of the kills to Russian Kornet ATGMs
The Pentagon is looking to speed up the delivery of the Abrams tank to Ukraine by refurbishing older models instead of manufacturing new ones
except the pentagon won’t be doing any of the refurbishing nor manufacturing, will they.
their partners MIC (bullets-R-us) will be doing the work and the pentagon will be footing the bill, meaning yet more graft ie kick-backs from Raytheon et-al to the pentagon guys who sign the receipts. recall the $200 hammers and toilet seats etc of the Reagan era.
World War III?…………………………………………….
Death has to have some excuse.
It must have thrown Biden into a panic when rumors came out that Zelensky is actually considering Xi’s peace proposals.
Sure deplete American back up weapons. Along with depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and profligate printing of fiat money America is functioning like it is in the last days of Rome.
Russia has enough stored old weapons to last 80 years of warfare if needed. Russian money is backed by gold and they have enough energy to last hundreds of years!
We will see how well our tanks will fare against a real enemy’s weapons (and his good buddy’s who is on sleepover with him this week) instead of lesser proxies for Russia.
I’m sure any losses will be blamed on training and tactics which could be overcome with in-country “advisors”.
Nothing like a good war to give an old man a quick (though fleeting) rise.