image from wikipedia
Wow, they’re going to send 31 M1 Abrams and another 30 0r so German Leopard Main Battle Tanks to the Ukraine.
60 tanks are equivalent to 4.3 Tank Company sized units, Cit. Battleorder.org (1)
This is what a standard US Army Tank Company would look like.
- A Head Quarters or HQ Section with 2 tanks one for the Company Commander and one for the Executive Officer
- With 3 tank platoons with 4 tanks each for a total 14 tanks in the company
That number is not even a battalion, its a woefully under strength battalion. So lets be honest, The Germans will pull their tank from storage, the American will have no choice but to send in gear from their Mannheim, Germany forward stagged site, and others as well. That’s the only way The U.S. can get the 30 tanks to the Ukraine in 60 days.
How many Tanks are the Russians deploying against the Ukraine?? that is an important perspective, because the number of tanks deployed against the Ukraine will tell you the number of Tanks you’ll need to defend the Ukraine from any armored force.
I don’t know , but I’m pretty sure there are at least 1000 Russian tanks, there are probably more, but at least 1000, tanks of various models.
60 tanks goes into 1000 16.667 times or 16.6 to one Russian tanks to these 60 tanks.
This is just the raw numbers, this doesn’t address, and this is a huge issue, and that is training.
What’s The big Deal With Training!
No One, Me included, just crawls up on an M1 Tank and poof they’re off to war.
I know because I was a US Army Tank Crewman, I graduated from “DisneyLand” [No La Reina] (Disney Barracks At Fort Knox Ky under the 4th Training Command in 1981).
It took me 17 weeks to go through the US Army POI (Program Of Instruction) for Armor Crewmen 19E-10 Series.
Also while I had the mechanical proficiency to work on and in a real limited sense operate a Tank, it took me 3 years to really become a tank crewman.
That means going through both Technical and Tactical training at individual tank level, then at Tank section level, akin to squad level, and then Platoon level training, then after that at Company level training and then learn how to apply all that training toward coming together as a Company Team, and then you would train further as a crew a, Section and Platoon and Company to become a Company Team in a Battalion sized unit.
They say it takes 2.5 years to go through that training, I first went through this kind of training in 1981 -1983 in 2nd US Armored Cavalry Regiment (2SCR These Days), I was lucky, really lucky, in that, I had a bunch of Nam vets who were my NCO’s ,also, who at one time at least had been shot at. Lets just say they had little patience for my snot nosed private shit. And you can say I learned the trade of Tanking, hard and pretty fast. Personally I went on as a Tanker in the US Army and National Guard units for a Decade, until I got out after Desert Storm in early 1994. What I’m getting at and what concerns me is, unless they are already training the crews of these tanks, and have been for at least 17 weeks to get them mechanically skilled to handle the tank, they wont really be available until fall this year. Again because it takes TIME to set up and build the training locations for class rooms, and then conduct said training, again it takes time to set up all training locations, for driver training ranges and lets not forget Tank Gunnery Ranges, and I mean Lotsa time, months of time. Unless the U.S. Govt is already moving behind the scenes to generate the necessary training, and is in the process of giving that training to the lucky recipients of these 31 tanks, then this is nothing but a dog and pony show.
I Guess we could just throw the tanks at the Ukrainians, cross our fingers and hope for the best. But I really hope they don’t do that.
(1) https://www.battleorder.org/us-army-tanks-modern
