this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Western-made armor is failing in Ukraine because it wasn't designed to sustain a conflict of this intensity, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.

Taras Chmut, a military analyst who's the head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised money to purchase and provide arms and equipment to Ukraine, said that "a lot of Western armor doesn't work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity."

"If you throw it into a mass offensive, it just doesn't perform," he said.

Chmut went on to say Ukraine's Western allies should instead turn their attention to delivering simpler and cheaper systems, but in larger quantities, something Ukraine has repeatedly requested, the newspaper reported.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are designed for peer engagement under a different strategy than ww2 era doctrines where tanks provided cover for infantry.

An Abrams is designed to use it's superior range, accuracy and speed to take out medium hard targets. Similar to the Mongols horse archer strategy.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How's that working out in Ukraine?

The Abrams was basically designed to take down insurgents in the Middle East lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Considering the project that led to the Abrams was approved in 1973, it's pretty clear who it was designed to fight.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The modern M1A2 came out in 1992, after the Gulf War. It's something like 10 tons heavier than the original M1.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Abrams was designed in a period were the primary focus would have been defending Europe from a Soviet invasion. It's done extremely well against soviet tanks, at least with American crews. The Ukraine troops are likely less effective having significantly less training and experience with them.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

The Abrams has seen action in... Iraq? Afghanistan? Both places where the US had complete superiority fighting against decidedly non-Soviet and non-Russian crews.

You could have put a Sherman covered in modern armour and with a modern gun and it would have done fine in Iraq and Afghanistan.