1 year ago
62
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in front of Congress, his speech included a not-so-subtle hint at what Ukraine needs to prosecute their counteroffensive to a successful conclusion.
Ukraine never asked the American soldiers to fight on our land instead of us. I assure you that Ukrainian soldiers can perfectly operate American tanks and planes themselves.
Handing over American M1A1 Abrams and a squad of F-15s or F16s isn’t completely unreasonable, but it has some pretty extreme challenges. kos has written at length about the logistical difficulties of introducing such systems. It’s not at all a question of where Ukrainian soldiers have the skills to sit behind the controls of a modern American weapon. It’s everything else.
Yet the real answer is the same answer I’ve been giving since the first weeks of the war—operating such gear might not be too hard, but maintaining it is a monumental challenge for Western armies. For Ukraine, dealing with myriad new weapons systems in the middle of a brutal war? Impossible.
This doesn’t mean Ukraine doesn’t absolutely need, or absolutely will not get, modern tanks. However, it may be that they could better utilize something other than an M1A1. There are alternatives. There’s another tank that’s been the target of Ukrainian requests since the war began: the German Leopard 2.
