Forbes: Ukraine Lost First M1 Abrams Tank

A drone hit the tank’s roof.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost the first M1 Abrams tank at the front, which was supplied by the United States of America as part of military assistance to Ukraine. In total, the Ukrainian military had 31 such combat vehicles.

According to Forbes, a video from a Russian drone appeared online, depicting the drone hunting one of the Abrams tanks of the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade west of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

A separate image depicts the same M-1 burning, apparently following a strike by the same, or another, drone.

“A few weeks later, the battalion suffered its first confirmed loss of a tank. The Russian drone video seems to confirm that what observers feared would happen, happened: a drone hit Abrams on its thinly-armored top, triggering an internal blaze that likely destroyed the vehicle. It’s unclear whether the four crew escaped,” Forbes writes.

Forbes also calls to ignore the Russian propaganda celebrating this first M-1 loss.

“No tank is invulnerable. And almost all tanks are especially vulnerable to top-down attacks. There’s just one exception: the Swedish Strv 122, which has additional armor on its turret roof. But even the Strv 122 isn’t impervious to enemy fire,” the journalists concluded.