Well, in addition to the fuel, the M1 requires sophisticated maintenance, weighs up to 75 tons, in its latest iteration and has higher fuel consumption than the Leopard. There're reasons there are so many more Leopards in Europe...I've looked and cannot find a source that states this. I did however find someone that claims Australia uses diesel fuel exclusively in theirs.
Yeah I get it. If someone can figure it out it would be Ukrainians. They have domestic jet/turbine mfg experience.
That's brought out in the article I linked - send them M1s first, of which we have a plethora, with the Leopard, with its fuel efficiency, to replace it eventually. The M1s and Leopards use the same ammo and were actually designed to fight side by side...
I don’t get all the dragging ass on this. There will be a spring offensive. We have to equip them. Same with the F-16 that are all getting retired soon. We’ve been training the Ukrainians for a while on these apparently. Why not send them?
Probably this just moves up the Russian offensive, trying to get what they can before the tanks can be supplied and the crews trained. The M1 normally requires 8-9 months. Obviously, it'll be speeded up and the Ukrainians have proven they can handle it...
One Station Unit Training (OSUT, which means new soldiers do Basic and tank crewman-specific training at the same base: Fort Benning) lasts 15 weeks, but the tank crewman-specific portion is four weeks. Now, that will just get you a crewman who is not a danger to himself and others around a tank. Then you have to do crew training ("In the crew of this tank, I'll do this job, and you'll do that job.") That takes a while as well and is usually done at the destination unit. Then there is collective training ("How does this tank work with that tank, and incorporate infantry, artillery, engineers, attack aviation, etc.?") takes still more time. Because we are Americans, love gadgets, and has enormous mounts of money, we do some of that in simulators, mockups of a tank interior, linked together by a computer so you can see the other tanks virtually as you maneuver across the virtual terrain. A lot of the collective training, however, is done by climbing into a tank and driving around the local training area.
That's 30 M1's and 100? M2's we've thrown into the mix. That's a lot of firepower.
I understand that the Leopards were originally designed for a conscript army. Germany only ended conscription in 2011. As a result, I doubt that the Leopard has as many bells and whistles and is faster to train on. Add the additional weight and fuel consumption of the M1 and you can see why they want it. I thought I heard yesterday that Germany was only sending 14 for fear of thinning out their own forces too much. However, the bar charts I've seen show them with hundreds, with Turkey second. OTOH, the Leopard has shown itself in combat not to be invincible, whereas, IIRC, an Abrams has never been lost...
The US lost a few in Iraq to really big IEDs.
Once again, the training bugaboo raises its head. We've just shipped the first F-16s to Poland. A while back, I read that they had made the decision to train all new pilots on them. They regarded the experience the older pilots had with the MIG and other Russian jets to be useless, if not an actual detriment to learning the F-16, so they plan to have dual air forces. That's a while back, when we first agreed to sell to them, so IDK if it's current...
You remarked that untrained crews could end up like the Russians. I have to dissent mildly, because of the different designs. Neither the Abrams nor Leopards store ammo like the Russian tanks. In addition, the Abrams have spent uranium armor. Both tanks are inherently more survivable in a direct hit. The Russians have proven over and over that protecting their soldiers is a distant second if not tertiary...
IIRC, most depleted uranium comes as a byproduct from the enriching process of making fuel (enriched uranium) for nuclear reactors.
