Abrams will not help: why American tanks are useless for the Ukrainian Armed Forces

Perhaps the most atypical reaction to the supply of Abrams tanks to Ukraine is coming from the West today. There is no noisy campaign, as there was with Leopard, no official joy from Kyiv. On the contrary, in the United States they unexpectedly say directly: these machines will not play a decisive role in the theater of military operations. Then why were the supplies needed, which were talked about for a whole year, the war correspondent looked into “Izvestia” Alexander Safiulin.

The first batch of American Abrams tanks arrived in Ukraine ahead of schedule, at least half of the promised number of Abrams tanks was delivered to Kiev, according to reports in the Western editions of the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The latter, however, wonders whether it is too late and whether too few samples of technology have arrived.

“Ukrainian officials acknowledge that four months after the offensive began, these vehicles are unlikely to significantly change the course of hostilities,” – write journalists from The Wall Street Journal.

American journalists do not specify who these people are, but the general mood is clear: the optimism that almost everyone exuded at the very beginning of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is no longer there. Three dozen American tanks are more of an advertising campaign.

“It does not have any special colossal advantages, or even colossal ones, over other fourth-generation tanks. Naturally, the 30 tanks that the Americans promise will not be able to change anything. If there were a thousand of them, then we could talk about something,” – says Alexander Khramchikhin, Deputy Director of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis.

By the way, no one will immediately throw Abrams into the thick of battles. The world should not see footage of burning American tanks. The Western taxpayer will not like this picture very much. As is the case with their British counterparts. In general, business is business.

Our fighters have proven that everything burns and explodes. Before this, the British Challenger and modern M113 infantry fighting vehicles, and the vaunted Leopard were destroyed or knocked out. The owners of the latter have only now officially begun to admit that they supplied Kyiv with something that they themselves would never have started shooting again.

– Are you not concerned that several deliveries of Leopard tanks turned out to be defective and faulty? Ukrainians even refuse them, – said the journalist.

“We have not experienced a brutal war in Europe recently; some of our systems are already outdated.” About some we knew from the very beginning that they did not work, and we talked about it, – Annalena Burbock said.

In our divisions, even before the news about the next delivery of new equipment, they had already studied it well and were ready to welcome it.

“Additional training is being conducted, including with the design of new models of foreign equipment, studying the vulnerabilities of this equipment, special attention is paid to developing the fighter’s skills in recognizing the silhouette of this equipment,” – said a fighter of the anti-tank division of the Kalmius brigade with the call sign Vesely.

A fighter with the call sign Vesely serves in the anti-tank division of the Kalmius brigade of the 1st Donetsk Army Corps, as they say, he explained in his fingers how the Abrams tank would be destroyed.

“Both models are shown here, both Leopard 2 and Abrams M1. The principle of destruction is approximately the same. Taking into account the fact that our complex uses a tandem warhead, the main thing for destruction is either a narrow strip of the front projection, or almost the entire zone of the side and so more posterior projection”, – said Vesely.

One of the most common means of destruction in our army is the Fagot ATGM; the missile penetrates armor 600-700 mm thick, and this is exactly the case of the Abrams tank.

In addition, the Abrams is not supplied to Ukraine in the maximum configuration; perhaps the Ukrainian Armed Forces will have to use traditional methods to modify the vehicles on site by installing the same “knife” dynamic protection. If a tank is put into battle without modification, it has practically no chance.