I think I saw this on another thread here – corruption has been uncovered in Ukraine government (a ways down that page). The officials are being fired. Possibly to be subjected to imprisonment (not mentioned in that blurb). Unlike Russia, where such officials are promoted (unless insufficiently pro-Vlad, and windows are near at hand).
Given the logistics requirements of the Abrams, I’m not sure if they would do Ukraine any significant good.
Defense against any Belorussian intrusion. Frees up other forces for active involvement. Not to mention the symbolism.
That depends-- The Russians don’t have the Javelin, itself. How good is their man-portable anti-tank weapon, and how many of them do they have? I’m sure that they have something that’s roughly equivalent, on paper, but how is it on the actual battlefield?
If the Russian equivalent can’t reliably kill an Abrams, or they can but don’t have enough of them, then the Abrams’ toughness against lesser munitions would make them a major asset.
Which is precisely what they are, by the triangle doctrine that goes back to at least WWII : tanks deal with infantry, anti-tank units deal with tanks, infantry deal with AT units.
The British in WWII had this Napoleonic view of tanks as modern cavalry whose job is to deal with enemy cavalry/tanks exclusively. Which cost them dearly in Normandy as the Germans lured them past hidden 88s using the little armour they still possessed as bait.
Basically only infantry can defend ground, and tanks are still useful for displacing them as long as they have adequate supporting infantry (and these days drones, missiles etc) to suppress the defender’s AT assets.
It’s quite good.
Except that kind of breaks down when infantry are themselves the anti-tank unit.
But in the hands of poorly trained, badly motivated troops? Not that good.
Russia’s destroyed plenty of vehicles in this war.
3000 tanks fought for 36 hours. We probably won’t see anything like that in Ukraine.
I would like to see Ukraine tanks finally break the brutal stalemate at Bakhmut.
It’s an encouraging step towards Ukraine reclaiming lost territory.
A lot of good information. It will require extensive training for the Ukrainians to fully use this tank.
The reluctance to supply tanks to Ukraine must be partially due to concern about the possibility of them being captured. We would rather not have the Russians being able to reverse engineer advanced features, or gather information concerning capabilities and weaknesses.
I…doubt it. It’s one thing to have something in your possession, another to actually make it. It’s not like Russia is new to the tank-making industry. If they could have made anything like Abrams or Leopard 2, they long since would have. Having a specimen in their hands won’t give them the ability, especially given the bite of material sanctions.
Perhaps they could trade it to the Chinese, who has a proven ability to copy things…
That’s why I think the Challenger is perhaps the best tank for modern warfare, because it has a rifled barrel which has a longer range than the Leopard or Abrams, so it could in theory take out infantry from beyond their anti-tank range. In addition, it has a reputation for toughness even compared to other MBTs, but that’s more icing on the cake since I don’t know enough about it one way or another.
The difficulties tanks have with anti-tank infantry are not primarily being able to destroy them at range. The primary difficulty is detecting them. People might be squishy, but they can hide a lot more easily than 50 tons of smoke-belching steel. Thermal sights are nice and all, but a guy with an NLAW behind a brick wall doesn’t have any heat signature aside from that of the wall.
Tanks are not an efficient anti-infantry indirect fire platform and aren’t used as such much. Artillery is just much better optimized for that job.
Interestingly enough a Challenger 1 does seem hold the verified world record for long-distance tank kill, one having taken out an Iraqi tank that was maybe 4 km away. But it might be had held as the Ukrainians are claiming that they beat that by a considerable margin using indirect fire targeted by use of a drone. The tank used? A T-64BV, a natively upgraded version of the old Soviet T-64.
Which would probably been a top attack, more akin to artillery than classic tank-zapping-tank.
Definitely the weakness of most modern tanks, and why the TOW 2B (BGM-71F) has a “fly-over top attack” warhead.
Yeah riiight. So we may as well sell an M1A1 or 2 to the Russkies and bring in some extra cash.