On January 26, 2023, the American edition of Politico reported, and then the deputy press secretary of the US Department of Defense Sabrina Singh officially confirmed at a briefing that American Abrams tanks in the M1A2 modification in export execution will be delivered to Ukraine. Sabrina Singh said: "I will only say that it will be the M1A2, and I will not go into further specifications."
M1A2 SEP v.2 Abrams tanks from the 2nd Armored Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during the international competition Strong Europe Tank Challenge 2018 at the Grafenwehr training ground (Germany), June 2018 (with) Christoph Koppers Recall that on January 25, US President Joe Biden announced the provision of 31 M1 Abrams tanks (a Soviet-style battalion kit) to Ukraine as military assistance, which was the first decision of the American government to send tanks to Ukraine.
According to a press release from the US Department of Defense, this new package of US military assistance to Ukraine totaling $ 400 million, allocated as part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), will include 31 M1 Abrams tanks (without specifying a specific modification) with ammunition and eight M88A2 Hercules armored recovery vehicles, as well as related equipment. [...]
According to the publication "Politico", M1A2 tanks will be transferred to Ukraine, but with the replacement of depleted uranium elements in the combined armor with elements from conventional armored steel. This is a typical American modification of all exported Abrams tanks in the M1A1/A2 modifications. In this regard, the United States cannot supply Ukraine with M1A2 tanks from the presence of the US armed forces and will be forced to manufacture them in a special export modification at the only operating American tank factory Joint Services Manufacturing Center (JSMC) in Lima (Ohio), operating under the management of General Dynamics Corporation. In fact, all M1A2 tanks after 2000 are not manufactured there anew, but are being redesigned ("refabrized") from M1/M1A1 tanks with storage. Thus, the production of a set of 31 M1A2 tanks in an export modification for Ukraine will inevitably take quite a long time - unofficially, the terms are called up to a year.
This was confirmed by Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, who said that "we simply do not have an excess of these tanks in warehouses in the United States, so it will take months to transfer these M1A2 Abrams to Ukraine."
In this regard, Politico reports that the JSMC plant in Lima is currently manufacturing ("refabrizing") 12 M1A2 tanks per month for export orders and for the foreseeable future should be fully loaded with orders for Taiwan (for 108 M1A2T tanks, the first ones were manufactured in 2022) and Poland (for 250 tanks M1A2 SEP v.3). On the part of bmpd, we also recall that in addition there are contracts with Kuwait (for 218 M1A2K tanks, apparently being completed) and Australia (for 75 M1A2 SEP v.3 tanks). Thus, an additional order for 31 tanks for Ukraine represents a certain production problem for the company in Lima.
In this regard, the head of the US Army procurement service, Doug Bush, said on January 25 that "the army provides senior leaders with several options for determining further actions" regarding where to get tanks for Ukraine. According to bmpd, it is most likely that in order to accelerate deliveries, tanks in the export modification M1A2 for Ukraine will be taken from among those already being converted for one of the export customers (most likely Kuwait or Taiwan).
According to unofficial American data, as of October 2021, the US Army (including training units, Reserve and National Guard) had 2509 Abrams tanks (including 750 M1A1SA, 1605 M1A2 SEP v.2 and 154 M1A2 SEP v.3), and more than 3,700 tanks (M1/M1A1/M1A2) were in storage. In total, about 10700 Abrams tanks have been manufactured since the beginning of production (including assembly in Egypt). To date, it has been supplied for export