Key Points – The US M1 Abrams tanks supplied to Ukraine have not had the anticipated battlefield impact, primarily due to insufficient numbers rather than inherent design flaws.
-Only 31 US Abrams were sent, a quantity too small to significantly counter Russia’s larger mass of armored vehicles, despite the M1’s advanced capabilities. Furthermore, like other Western tanks, the Abrams has proven highly vulnerable to cheap, ubiquitous FPV drones, a threat not central to its original design.
-While powerful, these advanced tanks are also difficult for Ukraine to sustain logistically. Without greater numbers and effective countermeasures against drones, their overall effectiveness remains limited.
What Happened With the M1 Abrams in Ukraine
Last year, ten months after it was first deployed in Ukraine, the US M-1A1 Abrams main battle tanks (MBT) were deemed as not having the impact on that battlefield that had been anticipated and generally “not useful”, in the words of the then-US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
The Biden Administration had been subject to no small amount (in the opinion of the author, deserved) criticism as to why major US combat systems were often not supplied in time and/or in sufficient numbers for Ukraine to conduct offensives against Russian forces.
The M1 Abrams has long been described as the most capable tank in the Western world.
It is also unique among Western designs in that it is powered by a gas turbine engine that significantly enhances the vehicle’s mobility.
Sullivan had presented the Abrams as an example of how some advanced American weapon systems did not have the impact that had been anticipated in the Ukraine theatre.
But Sullivan’s own comments reveal that it is not the combat power or the overall design of the Abrams that is responsible for these disappointing results on the battlefield.
“When it comes to Abrams tanks, we sent Abrams tanks to Ukraine… These Abrams tank units are actually undermanned because it’s not the most useful piece of equipment for them in this fight,” Sullivan had said last year.
Numbers Matter
That undermanned and “not enough of them” sentiment has been expressed by more than one observer of the Ukraine war, and about the conduct of the US in supporting Kyiv’s troops in the field with American hardware.
During the October 2024 Warsaw Security Forum, which took place one year after the M-1s were first provided to Ukraine, perennial critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former chess champion Garry Kasparov laid into US Government officials present about the anaemic – if not little more than symbolic – numbers of major combat systems being sent to Ukraine.
“How is it you can have hundreds of these M1 tanks idle and parked out in the desert, and then you only send 31 of them to Ukraine!?” he thundered at the Day One Night Owl session of the security conference.
His assessment that there are not enough advanced MBTs provided to Ukraine was seconded this April in an article for the London Daily Telegraph by retired Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British Army officer and tank soldier who commanded the 1st Royal Tank Regiment in Iraq.
His assessment is that the M1s have the same problem as the German-made Leopard 2 tanks in Ukraine: it all comes down to them being outnumbered.
“Like the [German] Tiger [tank] of WW2, it is very few in numbers. The Russians have lost thousands of T-72s, T-80s and T-90 tanks. Just 18 Leopard 2s have been supplied to Ukraine!”
At Least Half of M1 Abrams Tanks Sent to Ukraine Lost
All the advanced western tanks, he points out, to include the M1 are also “very susceptible to drone and ‘top’ attack and very difficult to fix if damaged or broken down.”
“These multi-million-pound tanks have become very susceptible to the ubiquitous $500 drones, which destroy them at an alarming rate,” he continued. “The Leopard 2 and CR2 [UK Challenger 2 tanks] were designed when there was no drone threat. Even at the battle of Cambrai in 1917 the [Allied] crews were very concerned that Germans were throwing hand grenades onto the roof of the earliest tanks where the armour was thinnest and destroying them.”
The tank crews “quickly put chicken wire cages on the top which effectively countered this threat. To a certain extent the metal cages now being welded onto the Leopard 2s and CR2s do counter the drones, but it is not until these tanks are fitted with the developing defensive aid suites, which will include multiple anti-drone lasers and other weapons, that this threat will be reduced to manageable proportions.”
“The Germans lost WW2 because they could not match the mass the Allies could generate. For instance, in the later stages of the war the Allies produced around 60,000 Sherman tanks, which eventually overwhelmed the more sophisticated and capable Tiger and Panther tanks because the Germans only had a few thousand of these. Likewise, the 18 Leopard 2s and the 14 CR2s we have sent barely scratch the surface in Ukraine today.”
The same meagre numbers are why the M1s have fallen short. The wise old saying of “if they were sent to fight there are not enough and if they were sent to die there are too many,” applies here once again.
In the end, 17 of the 31 M1 Abrams tanks sent to Ukraine were lost, although some reporting has this number as high as 21.
About the Authors:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
The Ukraine War
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