All types of tanks supplied to Ukraine turned out to be vulnerable
American Abrams, German Leopards and British Challengers turned out to be vulnerable to Russian weapons of destruction. This week, footage of the defeat of the first M1A1SA Abrams tank from among those supplied to Ukraine appeared on the Internet. Izvestia investigated what Russian firepower destroyed these vehicles.
He turned out to be vulnerable
American Abrams in the number of three or four cars were spotted in the Avdiivka direction at the end of February. Although the delivery of 31 tanks of the M1A1SA modification was completed at the end of September 2023, they were clearly taken care of and not thrown to the front line. And so the premiere took place.
The American M1A1SA Abrams tank in the Avdiivka direction
Image source: Photo: Social media
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the first tank was hit by a drone by the military of the 15th separate motorized rifle brigade. The movements of the car were discovered near the village of Berdych. Apparently, the Abrams were used during the counterattack to facilitate the withdrawal of AFU units and forces from the Avdiivka pocket. But these actions of the enemy failed.
Why was it there and then that they decided to throw them into battle? Probably, Abrams is now the most effective than the APU has in this area. They probably don't have any other cars of this class. And here, of course, it should be noted that the Abrams supplied to Kiev are a simplified modification originally from the 1990s—2000s.
The burning Abrams tank of the AFU units, destroyed by an FPV drone strike
Image source: Photo: Telegram/Vladimir Saldo
The M1A1SA lacks some of the most modern electronics and communications equipment, and it also has a lightweight design — due to the removal of additional uranium armor in the frontal and side parts of the tower. Yes, otherwise it is a fairly effective tank, and probably even an affected instance will be able to return to service after repair, but this machine worth about $ 6 million was disabled by an FPV drone worth less than $ 1 thousand. The blow was correctly aimed at the most vulnerable part — the laying of ammunition in the rear of the tower.
Armored mine clearance vehicle M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle during exercises at one of the training grounds in Germany
Image Source: Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
On the same days, another US—made combat unit based on Abrams, the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV), was hit in the Stepovoye (Petrovsky) area. This is a fairly rare and expensive technique that can make passages in minefields. In addition to the minesweeping, it is equipped with the M58 MICLIC remote mine clearance missile launcher (close in purpose to our UR-77 installation, also known as the "Serpent Gorynych"). They were first seen in Ukraine in November 2023 and have already suffered losses. This makes it much more difficult for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to prepare and conduct any counteroffensive actions, which are now very successfully stopped by the installation of minefields.
Not only the Abrams
What happens to other samples of Western tanks that were delivered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine during 2023?
The British Challenger 2 in the amount of 14 units were received by the APU by the summer of last year. They are the heaviest among modern Western vehicles, and, moreover, they had the glory of the most protected tank. And, of course, the new equipment was used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in one of the phases of the very "big counteroffensive" that was organized in the Zaporozhye direction — in the southern part of the special military operation zone. In late August and early September 2023, there were movements of "British" in the combat area, and immediately one of them was hit by a Russian ATGM "Kornet". Thick combined armor and protective equipment did not save. Since then, vehicles of this type have been removed from the front line and are used at best as artillery installations for firing from closed positions.
The burning British Challenger 2 tank, destroyed in the area of its
Image source: Photo: Social media
In the autumn of 2023, the AFU received the first batch of repaired German Leopard 2 tanks from Poland. Last year, they became the most massive modern Western vehicles of this class, which were supplied to Ukraine from various NATO countries. "Leopards" were used quite actively and were noticed in the Svatovo direction, near Kremennaya, and in other hot spots of the SVO. They also suffered the most significant losses. Even Western observers noted that at least 26 "German cats" were affected in the summer of 2023. Of course, these are total losses — both completely destroyed and disabled tanks that left the front line.
As expected, the APU is not able to repair such complex units on its own, and those that can be restored are sent to Poland. Equipment is damaged by various means, it can be mines, FPV drones, ground- and air-based anti-tank missile systems, artillery. If the target is not completely destroyed, then it is disabled and cannot be used as a combat unit. And again, we see that the means of destruction are several dozen, or even hundreds of times cheaper than their affected targets.
Leopard 2 tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles of the AFU units destroyed by the Russian military in the summer of 2023 in the Zaporozhye region
Image source: Photo: Social media
In addition, the losses show that it is extremely difficult and almost impossible to conduct combat operations even with sufficiently modern tanks against prepared defenses. At least the Armed Forces of Ukraine could not cope with this, and the vaunted Western equipment itself did not provide solutions to any combat tasks by its appearance alone. And any Western tank burns on the front line, no matter how colorfully its characteristics are described by the world press.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, as of March 1, 2023, a total of 575 aircraft, 267 helicopters, 13,862 unmanned aerial vehicles, 475 anti-aircraft missile systems, 15,304 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,227 multiple rocket launchers, 8,242 field artillery and mortars have been destroyed since the beginning of the special military operation, and There are also 19,236 units of special military vehicles.
Dmitry Kornev