According to Pentagon Deputy press Secretary Sabrina Singh, it will be necessary to "purchase these tanks"WASHINGTON, January 26.
/tass/. The United States currently does not have additional M1A2 Abrams tanks in its arsenal to send them to Ukraine, so the transfer process will take several months - these tanks will need to be purchased from manufacturers. This was stated on Thursday by Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh at a regular briefing for journalists.
"We simply do not have additional such tanks in the US arsenal, for this reason it will take several months to transfer these Abrams M1A2 tanks to Ukraine," she said.
According to her, it will be necessary to "buy these tanks for Ukraine." Singh confirmed that these will be tanks in the M1A2 modification. "But we are not talking about a delay, we simply do not have these Abrams tanks in our stocks to transfer them to the Ukrainians at the moment," she added.
Earlier, the Politico newspaper, citing sources, reported that the US authorities intend to supply Ukraine with an improved modification of the Abrams M1A2 tanks. However, this will be an export version, which does not include secret armor kits used by the US military itself. As the newspaper explained, this is due to the fact that US federal regulations prohibit the supply abroad of such modifications with secret elements.
The United States announced its intention to transfer 31 Abrams tanks to Kiev on Wednesday. Deliveries are planned to be carried out within the framework of the initiative to promote the security of Ukraine (Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, USAI), which involves the conclusion by the Ministry of Defense of relevant contracts with manufacturers, and not the provision of this or that equipment and funds directly from the Pentagon reserves. In this regard, the US administration previously noted that the delivery would take "months, not weeks."