US finalizing plans to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, US officials say

The US has a HUGE mothballed stockpile of the earlier variants.

Send them all I say

The M1A2 is the tank being considered. /shrug

No number yet. Supposedly 30 Abrams.
I'm not able to copy twitter links for now.

supposedly about 100 Leopards are going to be donated by 12 different countries

West wants to have Crimea under their control before negotiations I think.

That a deal might have been cut with Putin and that is why the refusal to send weapons.

Yes Crimea has to be taken back or Putin wins.

Approx 300 gallons every 8 hours according to Global Security:

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m1-specs.htm

And they're also a little harder to train up on as opposed to the Leopards. They can burn a gallon a MINUTE under some situations.
How about sending them some ground based Phalynx systems? They would take out these drone swarms.
And give them the ability to hit the Russians FURTHER behind the front lines.

Its a defensive weapon

And a lot cheaper than missiles or rockets. It just fils the air with lead & good luck to those Iranian pieces of shit.

It seems likely to me that, for reasons like those you outlined, the Abrams may not be well-suited for this theatre. Perhaps only a few would be used. But in agreeing to send them, the US may have broken the political logjam that's been keeping more-suitable Western tanks from Ukraine.

Germany has been dragging their feet WAY too much

Your Leopard runs low on fuel. Syphon some diesel from a truck or a farmer's tractor. JP8 that fuels the Abrams gas turbine engine? A whole lot tougher to find and source. Plus, it takes months to properly train maintainers. It's for show. To give "Dieter" a warm fuzzy so he'll part with his leopards. A much easier tank to train and maintain.

It can run on just about any fluid that burns.

But that adapability does come with the cost of vital routine maintenance.

We always used diesel when fueling the tanks.

Phalanx was designed as a ship mounted system. It was adapted to create the Centurion C-RAM (Combined Rocket Artillery Morter) system which still won't do what you describe but is closer to what you envision.

The Land Mounted Phalanx Weapons System (LPWS) combined with C-RAM needs the addition of several other sensor systems like the Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control (FAAD C2), Lightweight Counter Mortar Radars (LCMR), Firefinder radars, Ka-band Multi-Function Radio Frequency Systems (MFRFS), Air and Missile Defense Workstation (AMDWS), and several other components to handle drones. This stuff isn't cheap.

Mount all this stuff on several Oskosh by Gosh mobile prime movers with the generator sytems and you're talking about a $15 million system (in 2020 dollars) to cover, hell I don't remember, 2 square klicks of turf?

LPWS uses M940 ammo to reduce collateral damage, $20,000 to 60,000 per intercept.

Not cheap for limited area coverage.

Crabby

And thank you for all that info; I'm not even familiar with a few of those systems.

I understand that missiles are also being used, but I think the drones are a bigger problem because of how they send them 100 at a time. Maybe not the Phalynx because of all the added requirements you mention, but some other heavy fire system like the .50cals mounted to Humvees that could put a lot of rounds in the air? I'm just trying to get the most bang for the buck while dropping as many drones as possible

Phalanx was designed to be a point defense system to stop missiles, aircraft and small boats which have larger radar signatures. The other equipment was added to be able to detect artillery and mortar fire as well. Different sensors were needed to detect smaller objects as well as other processors to examine the incoming data. Power generators are required because Phalanx relies on shipboard power.

Another problem as I mentioned is the ammo. You can't just pump a lot of ammo into the air because what goes up, must come down and that can cause a lot of unwanted damage. In fact, there have been multiple incidents with Phalanx systems at sea causing collateral damage. USS Missouri sent out chaff to protect itself from incoming missiles which caused a ship nearby to fire it's Phalanx which caused some injuries or even a death, I don't remember. I myself saw a Phalanx shipboard test where the system shot the tow cable pulling a dummy missile and then the gun jammed. The dummy just barely missed hitting the deck I was standing on.

The solution to that problem is M940 ammo which instead of tungsten projectiles is a High Explosive Tracer Round which is designed to explode on impact with a target, OR burn-up after a set distance (2000 meters) if it doesn't hit a target.

Normal tracers are usually used in a 1 to 5 or 1 to 7 ratio to allow gunners to track where they are shooting. M940 is used in every round so none of the ammo comes back down. That's why video of the Land Phalanx Weapons System looks so cool. Every round is a tracer. Watch the video though and you'll notice the guns don't depress their fire too low so none of it comes back down to the ground. The ammo is very expensive too.

Another problem with multiple drone attacks is Phalanx doesn't have a large magazine (relatively speaking) so it is easily overwhelmed by a large number (more than 5) of incoming targets.

There are other systems in development to deal with the multiple threats that drones pose. The problem as I see it is that systems that are effective, are expensive and cover a very limited area.

On the other hand, the info I am privy to is that Russia does not have the resources to make drones of their own and their source of drones has been destroyed.

Crabby

Ukraine expects to get 100 Leopard 2 tanks from 12 countries, once Germany approves: Senior Ukrainian official

https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-expects-100-leopard-2-tanks-12-countries/story?id=96620510

Russkies are gonna get their asses kicked real bad.

This is of great concern as of late.

Once again the West is ahead of the Orc strategists.

Tanks, planes, trains and automobiles. Ukraine is fighting for all democracies and is doing it quite well.

at this point. Russia you started the war..then War it is.

Come normally in about four tanks to a platoon; 3 tank platoons, and two more tanks to a Company, and 4 companies to a battalion. (Up to about 64 tanks per battalion), plus another 100 or so troops per battalion for low level maintenance, supply, ammo, fuel, etc.

They need to get at least several battalions - it will take more than a month to get the tanks out of storage, and onto ships to carry them to Poland/Romania. Tanks are too heavy to rely on cargo airplanes.

Even if they start now, it’s going to take some time to get them all there.

We already have promised several hundred M-1’s to Poland.

but an Abrams Company has fourteen tanks. Three platoons of four tanks each, and then one tank each for the commanding officer and the executive officer. Each company usually also gets one deuce-and-a-half cargo truck for supplies, and a Humvee for administrative duties.

It was four tanks to a platoon, and four platoons (2 armor, 2 mech infantry) in a combined arms battalion. I just think they reorganized to three in 2016.

See https://www.battleorder.org/usa-cab-2016

It seems safe to say they'd also need at some basic maintenance training and equipment too, right? I'd guess they could skip over the more advanced/difficult things by sending the vehicles out of country for that sort of service, aye?

MBT's they must have pretty good intelligence that Russia won't retaliate with tactical nukes, I think Russia is in for a whole lot of hurt and sooner or later, the Russian High Command will come to the realization that Putin's war is lost and it's time for Putin to fall out of a high rise window.

This is my opinion only.

of Ukraine, though. I'm just an idiot on the internet, but that always seemed like a more likely path of Russian escalation than using tactical nukes. Outside of its usefulness in scaring/bullying countries from helping Ukraine, it seems like something that would have limited value compared to harm it would cause to Russia (and the world) But striking some facilities, convoys, whatever, in a neighboring country could be viewed as the non-nuclear nuclear option. I could see them deluding themselves into thinking that would scare NATO into retreat rather than being the catalyst to a wider more destructive war. Oh, then we also have the whole cyber thing. I think that falls into that category too.

I could see either of those snowballing into a war between Russia and NATO, and that escalating to nuclear weapon usage.

but the Russian military leaders are not fools, IMO, if Putin did order an attack on any NATO soil, the military or the oligarchs who actually run Putin would eliminate him.

Here's an interesting opinion article what might happen if Putin did order a tac. nuke strike on Ukraine.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/what-would-actually-happen-if-putin-hit-ukraine-with-tactical-nukes/ar-AA12CoFj?cvid=466f0877dfe341818ad248b81ba05b49