It is that type of appeasement that leads to Munich and world wars. It is important that kids learn there aren’t participation trophies in life, and not every day will be your day, some days it is your brother’s birthday.
This parental advice written by a person whose sole parental experience is changing my nephew’s diaper twice, 30+ years ago.
Exactly! It’s the kind of shit grandparents can get away with and we’re helpless to stop it!!
KevinC
22615
I’d say “Fine, let’s send them a handful of Abrams, they don’t even have to use them” but I’m sure Sholz will just find another excuse to drag his feet. After all, wasn’t their stance previously that they wouldn’t be the first to do so, which prompted the UK to agree to send Challengers?
Next up: the US didn’t send enough Abrams, so Germany will continue to hem and haw.
schurem
22616
So are there already 8000 ukrainians training on leopards up in Finland or Canada or something? So by the time the Germans get their panties untangled from their buttocks they can hop right in and pwn the everlasting fuck out of the orcs.
abrandt
22617
Yeah, goodness. I know Abrams is fuel hungry and maintenance is a whole thing, but give Ukraine enough that they can use them as a tip of the spear where they’ll be sure to have the fuel available for them. Then get them up to speed enough to do whatever field maintenance is necessary? They can ship them back to Poland or whatever if they need more work than that.
Whatever is needed to get Germany to give in. Leopard seems like the only Western tank that could be fielded in numbers. There aren’t enough Challengers, and Abrams has all the aforementioned difficulties. Is Scholz really more beholden to Russia than his own defense companies?
Grifman
22618
Actually, the US has thousands of Abrams in storage. Some are older 105mm M1A1’s but there are 120mm M1A2’s in storage also.
abrandt
22619
Edited my post a little bit as I didn’t mean to imply there aren’t enough Abrams. There are plenty and I even remember stories about Congress funding more that the army doesn’t want. We could give Ukraine a lot of Abrams but they likely couldn’t support that many of them.
Yeah, the Army doesn’t really need new tanks, but the problem is that all US tanks are produced in one facility in Lima, Ohio, and if the line goes cold then the entire supply chain falls apart. So Congress keeps funding new tanks and the Army basically gets to cycle in new armor every year.
The Marines also just got rid of all their Abrams.
I wonder if we still have a mountain of 105mm APFSD and HEAT rounds that are good? We’re not going to use them. Army transitioned to 120mm in the 90s. 105mm will have trouble penning modern tank armor, but Russia is fielding a lot of older stuff anyway. And 105mm will still kill everything else.
Calelari
22621
AIUI, in addition to the logistics and maintenance issues of the Abrams itself, there’s not a lot of the supporting vehicles to spare - transport, recovery, bridging, etc that would be needed. Soviet tanks are like 20 tons lighter so their existing stuff isn’t up to the task.
Grifman
22622
The power of guided munitions:
Grifman
22623
If this is true, the Russians are going to have a whole lot of new problems:
Grifman
22624
More guns from Sweden:
With all the recent aid packages announced - and more on the way, it looks like Ukraine is getting enough to put together two to three armored brigades, if they could only get Leopards. The US should give the Germans a head fake - send a dozen Abrams and have the Ukrainians park them. Germany just said the US need to send tanks - they said nothing about them actually being used.
RichVR
22625
And just recently Russia destroyed a housing complex with a missile used to sink aircraft carriers. Or so I’ve heard. So Ukraine is getting state of the art munitions and Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel?
Grifman
22626
They’ve been using SAM’s as surface to surface missiles in an alt mode, so they are definitely running short of precision missiles. But they have a ton of SAM’s so they are not running out of stuff to launch.
May be a concrete sign of a change in attitude / strategy.
abrandt
22629
Seriously, give them ATACMS on the condition that the US gets to approve the targets. I have to think Ukraine would accept if it meant they finally got some and the US gets to make sure the strikes aren’t going somewhere too “escalatory”.
Ukraine is going to out-artillery the Russians by using so many precision weapons even though they’ll never match the volume of fire. Knock out every target you want with a few precision shots or crater the countryside with dumb fire in the hopes that you hit something you want?
jpinard
22630
That is an AMAZING artillery piece.
