US and Germany will send limited numbers of main battle tanks to Ukraine in a major escalation of the war.

 

M1 Abrams infographic. BBC/Getty.

The United States and Germany will send limited numbers of main battle tanks to Ukraine in a major escalation of the war with Russia. BBC. The United States will send 31 M1 Abrams to Ukraine while Germany will send 14 Leopard 2 tanks. Ukraine claims that the tanks would help blunt Russian offensives and that it would enable them to launch their own offensives. The decision was a reversal as the United States had long argued the tanks would be useless in Ukraine due to the high fuel and maintenance costs and would be difficult for Ukrainians to actually operate. The M1 Abrams will come at extreme cost as they are not coming from US stockpiles and will have to be bought from private contractors at a cost of $400 million. No delivery date has been announced for the tanks but it is expected to take a very long time to deliver the M1 Abrams and a couple of months to do so for the Leopards. 

My Comment:

Yet another utterly idiotic and pointlessly evil escalation of the war in Ukraine by the Biden administration. Sending a small number of main battle tanks will obviously not win the war for Ukraine. It will however anger Russia for almost zero reason. 

What is funny to me is that every excuse the United States gave to keep these weapons out of Ukraine is still completely valid. The Ukrainians are not likely to be able to use these tanks in any meaningful way. The Abrams are maintenance intensive and absolutely chug fuel. And they, along with the Leopards, are so heavy that they will damage Ukrainian roads and get bogged down during the mud season (which is lasting most of the winter this year).

There is also the fact that modern tanks need combined arms tactics to be effective. That isn't possible for either side in the Ukraine conflict due to the development of extremely effective anti-air weapons. Ukraine would also need infantry and artillery support for these tanks to work and though they have plenty of conscripts and mercenaries to throw into the meat grinder, they do not have an advantage in artillery. Indeed, Russia's massive advantage in artillery means that even infantry support would not be that effective in defending these tanks. 

Getting the tanks to the front lines is going to be a huge problem as well as Russia advances. Just getting the tanks into Ukraine will probably take months. Supposedly the Leopards won't take to long but the Abrams is going to take so long to deliver it's very possible the war will be decided by then. Russia does seem to be drawing out the war quite a bit on purpose at this point. They have been mostly using mercenaries, Chechens and prison battalions to fight and haven't really fully deployed the army at this point. 

Main battle tanks are not anywhere near as invincible as they once were, and the M1's are 40 years old. Both the Leopards and the Abrams have suffered major loses in recent wars. In Iraq, ISIS was able to counter both tanks and they were just insurgents, not a modern army. The Kurds were also able to destroy many Turkish Leopards as well. The idea that main battle tanks would be able to end the war in Ukraine's favor is not based on reality. 

What is the real question is how Russia will react to this. They would be totally justified in using nuclear weapons at this point, but I don't think it will happen, at least not yet. I don't think Russia is afraid of these tanks at all due to the fact that they know how effective their weapons are and how limited these tanks would be in Ukraine.

But doing so is another example of Biden escalating for no reason. Biden seems to think that the war is winnable and keeps sending aid. That doesn't seem to bear any relation to reality at all. Putin knows that his enemies are not rational actors and that is obviously dangerous for everyone. We are already unofficially at war with Russia and if Biden keeps doing stuff like this it might just turn into World War III...