Forbes: Elite Ukrainian Brigade Has ‘Ultimate’ Abrams Tanks
9- 8.10.2024, 10:23
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Ukrainian fighters modified the American equipment.
The Ukrainian army’s elite 47th Mechanized Brigade, which is fighting in many of the bloodiest battles in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine for 15 months straight, finally rotated off the eastern front line early last month for a well-earned period of rest and reset, probably has the most cutting-edge American Abrams tanks.
The brigade’s only tank battalion was equipped with the American Abrams M-1A1 Situational Awareness of the 2000s model, which is not the best protected, but it is likely that the Ukrainian machines had been modernized, Forbes writes with a reference to a video the 47th Mechanized Brigade posted on or around Monday, depicting some of the unit’s surviving tanks in training:
“The 69-ton, four-person M-1s sport U.S.-made reactive armor blocks on their sides and Ukrainian-made reactive armor blocks on their turrets as locally-crafted anti-drone cage armor and drone-grounding radio jammers.”
The journalists noted that the modifications were tailored for defeating two main threats: anti-tank missiles and explosive drones. The reactive armor explodes outward to deflect the missiles’ warheads. “The cage armor and jammer disable and block explosive drones,” stated in the material.
How many M-1s the 47th Mechanized Brigade has left is unclear. The analysts at the intelligence collective Oryx have tallied six destroyed Abrams and eight damaged or abandoned ones.
“Weirdly, the United States has not shipped replacement M-1s. Those first 31 Abrams, which arrived in Ukraine a year ago, are the only Abrams the Americans have pledged, despite there being literally thousands of the tanks in storage in the United States,” stated in the article.