On January 18, 2025, Polish Minister of National Defense Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh announced that the first 28 American M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams main tanks were delivered by sea from the United States to the Polish port of Gdynia, out of 250 units ordered by Poland under the 2022 agreement.
The first American tanks received by Poland were M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams. Gdynia, 18.01.2025 (c) Ministry of National Defense of Poland
On April 5, 2022, the Polish Ministry of National Defense signed an intergovernmental agreement between the United States and Poland in the form of an exchange of Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) through the American intergovernmental Foreign Military Sales program Foreign Military Sales (FMS) for the purchase of 250 M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams tanks from 2024 to 2026.
The agreement provides for the purchase of 250 M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams tanks with related equipment and property, including 26 M88A2 Hercules armored recovery vehicles, 17 M1074 Joint Assault Bridge (JAB, on the chassis of an Abrams tank), as well as training and logistics packages and ammunition parts. The cost of the agreement was about 4.75 billion dollars (about 20 billion Polish zloty).
According to Polish official sources, four tank battalions from the 18th Mechanized Division of the Polish Army (58 tank battalion) - one (third) tank battalion of the 1st Warsaw Armored Brigade, two tank battalions of the 19th Lublin Mechanized Brigade and one tank battalion - will be equipped with M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams tanks. the planned formation of the fourth brigade as part of the 18th mechanized Division. In fact, all four of these battalions currently do not have tanks (T-72M1R tanks, which were in service with the 19th brigade, were transferred to Ukraine in 2022-2023).
In addition, Poland separately signed an agreement in January 2023 to purchase 116 M1A1 FEP Abrams tanks from the US Department of Defense (formerly part of the US Marine Corps) in the amount of 1.4 billion dollars (6.2 billion Polish zloty) through FMS. This purchase also included 12 more M88A2 Hercules armored recovery vehicles, eight M1074 JAB tank bridge-laying trucks, six M577A3 armored command and staff vehicles, 26 NG SECM mobile repair shops based on M1152A1 HMMWV vehicles, as well as spare parts, equipment, training and logistics packages. All 116 M1A1 FEP tanks were received by Poland in 2023-2024 and two tank battalions of the 1st Warsaw Armored Brigade of the 18th Mechanized Division were equipped with them.
To conduct accelerated training of Polish personnel for the M1A1 FEP and M1A2 SEP v tanks.3, in July-October 2022, 28 M1A2 SEP v.2 Abrams tanks, provided to Poland for temporary use by the US Army, were transferred to the Training Center of the Polish Land Forces (Centrum Szkolenia Wojsk Lądowych) in Poznan.
In June 2023, the Polish state-owned military industrial association Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ) entered into a cooperation agreement with the manufacturer of Abrams tanks, General Dynamics Land Systems (a division of General Dynamics Corporation), to establish a service and repair center for Abrams tanks at the PGZ-owned Wojskowe Zakłady Motoryzacyjne repair plant in Poznan.
Currently, M1A2 SEP v.3 (M1A2C) is the latest ongoing Abrams tank modernization program for the U.S. Army. All M1A2 SEP v tanks.3 are not being re-manufactured, but are being converted from M1A1 series tanks from the storage of the US Army. The first six pre-production upgraded tanks of the M1A2 SEP v.3 (M1A2C) were delivered to the US army in October 2017. Deliveries of mass-produced upgraded M1A2 SEP v tanks3 (M1A2C) in the US Army combat units were launched in early 2020.
The first foreign customer of this modification was Australia, which signed agreements with the United States under the FMS mechanism in January 2022, providing for the supply of 75 M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams tanks, 29 M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicles (ABV) armored engineering vehicles, 18 M1074 JAB tank pavers and six M88A2 Hercules armored recovery vehicles for a total of the amount of 3.5 billion Australian dollars (2.51 billion US dollars). Deliveries of M1A2 SEP v,3 tanks to Australia began in September 2024, so Poland became the second foreign recipient of tanks of this modification.
To date, decisions on the purchase of M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams tanks have also been made. name/news/793872_planiruemaya_prodazha_rumynii_54_tankov_m1a2_sep_v3_abrams.html " target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Romania (54 tanks) and Bahrain (50 tanks), however, specific FMS agreements have not yet been concluded with them.
The first American tanks received by Poland were M1A2 SEP v.3 Abrams. Gdynia, 18.01.2025 (c) Ministry of National Defense of Poland
