The Eastern military hardware has been the backbone of Ukraine’s resistance against Russian aggression.
The United States supplied M1 Abrams tanks, which have played an immense role, but have also been under extreme stress on the battlefields, and produced massive losses.
Of the 31 Abrams tanks delivered to Ukraine from the United States, many have been lost to Russian forces through drones and advanced anti-tank missiles, including Kornet missiles.
Tanks have been hit by drone fuel igniting their ammunition compartment, and side armor penetrated by missiles. Ukraine mothballed the Abrams tanks until now and reassessed some tactics.
More recently, there have been additional accounts of more Abrams tanks destroyed, even the fleet diminishing.
The Abrams may be capable, but it has poorly been faring in the brutal and attritional warfare characteristic of the combat along the front between Russia and Ukraine. The war has been characterized as a grind, where there have been established front lines and where tanks are expected to fall.
According to the Forbes website, Ukraine’s 47th Brigade lost its first M-1 Abrams, when a Russian drone hit the ammunition compartment of the tank, blowing itself up and destroying the Abrams.
The second Abrams was knocked out, by a Kornet laser-guided anti-tank missile that smacked into the relatively thinly protected side of the tank’s hull and penetrated through the attached M-19 explosive reactive armor.
Just a week after the loss of Kornet, yet another anti-tank round hit a third Abrams in the field, this one igniting a fire that cooked off the main gun rounds in the ammo compartment. The blast doors and the exterior blowout panel on the compartment must have failed.
After Ukraine’s further loss of two Abrams tanks, it removed the tank from the frontline.
Ukrainian was forced to take U.S.-supplied battle tanks, known as Abrams M1A1, out of operation because of the difficulties of performing operations without being spotted or attacked by Russian drone warfare, according to NPR.
In an interview, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady said, The fight keeps evolving and that’s ubiquitous unmanned aerial systems putting massed armor at risk.
Grady and his Ukrainian counterparts reworked tactics on Abrams, but the new strategies haven’t saved tanks. Recent video footage confirms two more Abrams were destroyed recently, leaving fewer Abrams left in the Ukrainian fleet.
The 47th Mechanized Brigade, the only user of the Abrams in the Ukrainian army, rolled into action north of Avdiivka, the locus of Russia’s winter offensive, late last fall. The M-1s arrived shortly after, replacing the brigade’s few surviving Leopard 2A6s. The M-1s have been in the thick of the fighting as the Ukrainians retreated from the ruins of Avdiivka and established a new defensive line a few miles to the west.
The M-1 Abrams is a strong tank, but no more impregnable than any other tank in a war that has annihilated over 6,000 Russian tanks and at least 700 Ukrainian ones. Casualties from mines, artillery, and perhaps even other tanks will continue to accrue as the war drags on and the remaining Abrams keep fighting.