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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anyone who thinks this is a good idea has never served in a US Army Armored Corps.

Abrams are [i]incredibly[/i] maintenance intensive systems. And they consume huge amounts of fuel. And presumably all of the current tech within them will have to be removed - everything from the armor, comms, TA and FC equipment. Basically we’ll be sending them functional hulls with operable main guns and little else. And the power unit will be totally unfamiliar to people who come from a knowledge base centered around diesel engines. Turbo shaft engines are totally alien to folks who are used to pistons and fuel injectors.

We can spare the tanks of course, we have over 3,000 M1’s sitting in storage in the California desert. But what we’d be sending them won’t be a game changing weapon system.

I never crewed in an Abrams, I was in Bradley’s. But we operated with Abrams in combined cavalry/armor units pretty often, and it will be interesting to see how 40 year old M1’s do in a European theater. I’ve only seen them in deserts- a place they were not initially designed for. They were actually created to fight of the flat farmlands of Western Europe, and Ukraine is a pretty reasonable facsimile of that terrain. So we’ll finally get to see if our 80’s era tanks can hack it in the theater they were designed for.

Something interesting I noticed - this article just says “tanks”. Nothing else? No bridging gear? No mine clearing? No extraction units? No lowboy haulers? No trucks? No fuelers? Armor doesn’t go to war all by itself. Tanks don’t operate very long without support equipment and support vehicles. And there’s no mention of that. I’d like to believe that’s just sloppy journalism, but nothing would surprise me these days. But if they just sent tanks, that’s a huge oversight. And it’s an indication that the White House isn’t listening to the Pentagon.  [/quote]

WIth due respect, you are woefully wrong here.

First off, the US is sending recovery vehicles along with the Abrams.  Second, already staged and ready in Europe are U.S. military repair, maintnance, and service depots in Germany and now Poland (with ample spare parts).  Third, you failed to mention Abrams have a turbine engine (just like the Russian T-64, while the '62, the 72, and the T-80 use diesels, as does the Leopard).  The Abrams turbine runs not only on JP 4, but regular gas and a variety of other fuels.

But that is not even relevant, since tanks never drive long distances on their own in Europe; they are transported by rail to a railhead near the front (this is why the ground lines of communication are so crucial in this war).

The most surprising thing lacking in your post is lack of knowledge of the reality on the ground in Ukraine: they already have over 1000 tanks:  a mix of mostly T-72s of various versions, T-62, a few T-64s, and some captured T-80s.  The token US and German tanks might seem small, but the German decision unlocks Leopard donations from half a dozen other countries, totaling close to 300 Leopards - no small number (especially considering Western tanks easily demolished T-72s in combat in Iraq, while suffering insignificant loses).  Obvioulsy Ukrainian's 1000  T-72 tanks are equal to Russian T-72 (they came from the exact same factories).

Look up the Wiki on the Bradley fighting vehicle you trained on:  even though it was only supposed to "follow behind" the Abrams as a mere troop carrier, Wiki's source states the Bradley destroyed even more T-72s than the Abrams.  On the ground in Ukraine, all western weapons have proven vastly supperior to what the Russians currently possess.  It is not even close.  Western tanks are a big deal.  A counter offensive is comming, and then you will see.

The [/quote]

I saw that the US is also sending well over a hundred logistics vehicles with the Abrams - lowboy transporters and recovery etc.[/quote]

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