The Tank Museum on The Tanks Going To Ukraine

The Tank Museum has a video up covering five tanks being sent to Ukraine (Challenger 2, T-72, Leopard 2, Leopard 1, and the M1A2 Abrams).

Some of this will be familiar to regular readers, but I did learn a few new nuggets:

  • Despite previous reports that we were sending M1A1 Abrams to Ukraine, we’re actually sending more modern M1A2s. No word on which SEP level, but I would bet against the most modern SEP3 package, as not all America’s own active armor has been retrofitted with that yet.
  • I didn’t realize Germany had also given the greenlight to ship older Leopard 1s to Ukraine. The 105mm rifled gun is probably undergunned vs. T-72 and newer Russian tanks, but should be able to punch through older tanks and pretty much all Russian BMPs. They’ll be useful for second echelon and infantry support roles. (And we might consider demothballing older 105mm gunned M1s to ship to Ukraine as well.)
  • I didn’t realize that only some 440 Challengers had been built.
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    2 Responses to “The Tank Museum on The Tanks Going To Ukraine”

    1. Kirk says:

      The really key thing is going to come down to logistical support. If I were a Ukrainian logistician right about now, I’d be drinking very, very heavily during my off-duty hours…

      On the other hand, if you offer General Dynamics and the other contractors enough cash, a lot of things become possible. I watch KBR un-f*ck the logistics mess we created in Kuwait due to Donald Rumsfeld’s incompetent meddling, and that was something I’d have thought damn near impossible.

      Word to the wise: When the gods of the Army Time-Phased Force Deployment List tell you to put a specific logistics element into place in theater at a specific point in the force projection build-up? You do it; you do not second-guess it, nor do you blithely hand-wave the function that that specialist unit was supposed to be doing away. That’s how Rumsfeld damn near caused the Iraq effort to blow up in our faces, and it was only through the sacrifice of several field-grade logistics officer’s careers that we finally gave up on the mess he created and hired KBR to unf*ck the situation. Watching that happen was a bit of a wondrous thing; they brought in some Aussie chick who’d earned her chops running several major ports in Southeast Asia, gave her the bodies she needed, and that magnificent broad proceeded to unscramble the mess in about six months of hard work. She earned every penny they paid her, and I wish I remembered her name.

      Logistics is hard. Good logisticians are what win wars; the epic faggotry you see on display with all those half-hard VDV types delivering epic karate-chops and leaping through flaming hoops? That’s the kind of bullshit that only Third-World nationals fall for; that kind of thing is utterly useless and totally meaningless when it comes to actually making war and winning one. The last time the Russians won a war, they subcontracted all that crap to the US. Without the US logistical support, the Soviets would have been pushed back to the Urals and ass-raped by the Germans, even with the massive force imbalance they had going for them. Most of the Russian troops Stalin raised would have had to go without a lot of essential things, like food, fuel, and ammunition. Which would have given the Germans the victory they thought they’d get… Absent all the food, fuel, and other stuff we sent the Soviets, WWII would have ended with them confined to Siberia and awaiting the axe to fall from the Japanese in Manchuria. They’d have never been able to get it together and actually supply everything they really needed to fight, on their own. Unpleasant reality, but true nonetheless–We gave them the tools, they gave the war effort their blood. It was a really bad trade, for them… They still haven’t recovered from it, in demographic terms.

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