“The mere presence of Abrams tanks will provide a powerful deterrent,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted upon the arrival of the American tanks at the end of September. His American counterpart Joe Biden called the tanks “the most capable in the world”. In total, Ukraine received 31 units of the M1A1 variant of the armored vehicle, while part of the Ukrainian troops in Bavaria, Germany, received three months of training to learn how to operate the tanks.
But when the Americans approved the deployment of the Abrams in January 2023, the battlefield looked completely different. Ukraine was then preparing a spring offensive, and the Abrams, with a price tag of $10 million each, would be vital in breaking through Russian lines. But the tanks ultimately arrived too late to play a role in that spring offensive.
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Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the commander of the Ukrainian military intelligence service GUR, was clear from the start that the Abrams tanks are used in a “tailored manner in very specific, deliberate operations.” Otherwise, he believes, there would soon be few deployable Abrams left. “If they are simply used at the front and only deployed in a regular manner, they will not survive long on the battlefield. They should therefore be used in breakthrough operations, but after extensive preparation.”
Five tanks already destroyed
In late February, Russia claimed for the first time to have destroyed one of the Abrams tanks on the frontline near Avdijivka, the hotly contested city in eastern Donetsk Oblast that had fallen into Russian hands earlier that month. Reported last week The New York Times that in the past two months, five of the 31 Abrams tanks have already been destroyed, while three others are “moderately damaged.” It even led to the question of whether tanks still have a place in modern warfare. The ubiquity of Russian drones on the Ukrainian battlefield means that there is “no open terrain where you can just drive without fear of being detected,” an anonymous senior US defense source told AP.
According to US Admiral Christopher Grady, tanks are still an important part of the war machine, but they are at risk in an environment where “unmanned aerial systems (aka drones, ed.) be ubiquitous.” And so the tanks have been removed from the front for the time being. According to AP, Ukraine and the United States are discussing how the vehicles can be optimally deployed.
