M1 Abrams Night time Hearth. Image – DVIDS/ SSG Mason Cutrer
In early March 2024, press reports of the battle at Berdychi, 5 miles northwest of Avdiivka, asserted the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade lost three M1A1 Abrams key struggle tanks, at minimum 4 M2A2 Bradley Combating Autos and two Assault Breacher Motor vehicles in beat there. These losses depict 10 % of the brigade’s tanks, 5 percent of its infantry battling vehicles and around 30 per cent a third of its armored engineer cars.
In late March 2024, unbiased visual reporting verified four wrecked Abrams tanks in the vicinity of Avdiivka. Make that 12.9 per cent of Ukraine’s Abrams misplaced in 1 fight.
Having said that. these experiences also asserted the capture of the rubble of Avdiivka price tag the Russians “at the very least 16,000 dead, almost certainly tens of countless numbers of wounded and almost 800 armored vehicles.” Imprecise reports of Ukrainian losses recommend a couple of thousand killed, 1000’s much more wounded and much less than 100 armored vehicles. The Ukrainians claimed the struggle proficiently halted the progress of the Russian 2nd and 41st Merged Arms Armies.
The function of the M1A1 Abrams figured prominently (albeit not in element) in these information accounts of Avdiivka and Berdychi. Such experiences will probably attribute prominently in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s upcoming series of needs for additional U.S. and European financial and materials support.
But the Ukraine War persists in begging the problem — Are state-of-the-art weapon systems, these as the M1A1 Abrams, definitely drive multipliers in Ukraine? Or are they destined to be shed and abandoned on the battlefield?
Even though a lot of defense pundits wax eloquently about the technological sophistication of Western overcome automobiles, the Forecast International Weapons Group at the time once more maintains technology by yourself is not the key to fashionable armored warfare. How these weapon systems are used tactically is, and often will be, the vital variable.
Equally the Ukrainian and Russian armies have exhibited a outstanding deficiency of aptitude, enable by itself inclination, to appropriately exploit the possible of superior weapon methods on the battlefield in Ukraine. This is not stunning, even so, as both armies present a mirror image of every single other in conditions of contemporary tactical sophistication . . . or, extra precisely, the lack thereof.
If the Western fight cars in Ukraine, this kind of as the Abrams, are employed with crews and commanders very well-grounded in Western armored warfare doctrine, the influence on the battlefield could be devastating for Russian forces. But if Ukrainian forces insist on utilizing these Western weapon methods according to their current Soviet-style doctrine, the effects on the battlefield will stay combined at very best, disastrous at worst. Even the most sophisticated weapon in the entire world is completely ineffective in untrained (or improperly experienced) hands.
Regrettably, as the slaughter in and about Avdiivka and Berdychi mirror, carries on to suggest the Ukrainians have NOT embraced Western armored combat doctrine. Certainly, the Ukrainians are nevertheless working in the exact discredited Russian mode.
Technology does not acquire battles. Thoroughly educated soldiers get battles!