“This tank story is not satisfactory,” he added. “The decision’s been made, OK. Then let’s get ready to execute it and cut through whatever the red tape is.”
The independent, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, said there is a “bipartisan concern” over the time frame, warning that not sending the tanks soon could prove to be “a tragic mistake.”
“Our country has thousands of main battle tanks,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said earlier in the hearing. “It would seem like it’s not that hard to find 31 and get them there.”
Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill had long pressed President Joe Biden to send Kyiv U.S.-made main battle tanks, a move the administration finally agreed to in January. On Thursday, during a hearing with U.S. European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli, and U.S. Transportation Command’s Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, senators were animated about why the administration can’t get them there much sooner.
The initial January announcement said the U.S. would provide M1A2 tanks, which would need to be overhauled in a process that could take as long as two years. But the Pentagon said in March the military would pull out some of its older M1A1 Abrams that need less refurbishment and would arrive by the fall.
A separate tranche of tanks is set to arrive in Germany next month for Ukrainian troops to begin training.
The Army and defense contractor General Dynamics are working on the tanks slated to be sent this year, which have been pulled from Army depots to send to Ukraine this spring and summer.
The armor on the tank’s turret and the optical sights are not eligible for export, so they need to be swapped out before they are sent overseas, something that can happen within weeks.
The work is being done at the Army’s facility at Lima, Ohio. The line has been exceptionally busy in recent months, with tanks for Poland and Taiwan — along with other allies — going through the upgrade process side-by-side.
The Polish order in particular is a rush job, with Warsaw slated to begin receiving its 116 M1A1 tanks that it ordered in January by this spring.
While the timeline for the Ukraine-bound tanks has been sped up, the autumn delivery schedule still didn’t sit well with senators.
Cotton accused the Biden administration of dragging its feet on following through on the January decision to provide the Abrams, which it had initially resisted but announced in tandem with a decision by Germany to send its own Leopard 2 tanks.
“I think the main reason for that is [also] the main reason why we didn’t even agree to supply the tanks for a year, which is that President Biden didn’t want to supply them,” Cotton said. “And again, I think we could supply them faster than eight or nine months if there was the political will.”
Cavoli, quizzed by Cotton about when tanks will arrive beyond those that will be used for training Ukrainians, said military planners were moving to speed up the process.
“The dates are moving right now,” Cavoli said. “We’re trying to accelerate it as much as we can.”
Another GOP senator, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, pressed Cavoli and Van Ovost on whether the nearly three dozen Abrams tanks had been identified, if they were located in the U.S. or in Europe and how quickly they could be delivered once ready. Van Ovost, who oversees the movement of military equipment and personnel around the globe, said her command has “multiple avenues to deliver Abrams tanks by air or by sea” and could do so quickly once given orders to transport tanks.
Rounds argued the holdup amounts to “a policy decision that [the administration is] not prepared to deliver 31 Abrams tanks at this time.”
“The bottom line is, if we needed those tanks, it shouldn’t take eight months for the United States Army to be able to access 31 Abrams tanks,” Rounds said. “If we needed them tomorrow, we’d get them very very quickly.”
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Russia’s army is estimated to have lost nearly 40% of its prewar fleet of tanks after nine months of fighting in Ukraine, according to a count by the specialist thinktank the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).
That rises to as much as 50% for some of the key tanks used in combat, forcing Russia to reach into its still sizeable cold war-era stocks. Ukraine’s tank numbers are estimated to have increased because of the number it has captured and supplies of Soviet-era tanks from its western allies.
John Chipman, the thinktank’s chair, said the war had been “a political and military failure for Russia” highlighting shortcomings in leadership and deficiencies in its munitions, despite Kremlin modernisation efforts.
“Russia’s actions over the past year have raised questions not only over the competence of its military and senior military leadership, but also over command cohesion,” he said, launching the IISS’s annual Military Balance audit of the world’s armed forces.
The thinktank’s figures are based largely on open source images from drones, satellites and on the battlefield, running from the beginning of the war to the end of November, although the conflict means numbers can only be estimated.
Its headline count is that Russia’s number of tanks in its army have reduced by 38% from 2,927 to 1,800, while there have been particularly heavy losses of its workhorse T-72B3, an upgrade first delivered to its army in 2013.
Heavy losses on the battlefield have meant that Russia had lost “around 50% of its pre invasion fleet” of the tank and a related variant, Chipman said, and slow industrial production was “forcing Moscow to rely on its older stored weapons as attrition replacements”.
Russian overoptimism meant that it suffered heavy tank losses at the beginning of the war, particularly in the abortive attack on Kyiv, where large numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles moving in a convoy were destroyed on roads north of the capital. Many others were captured or towed off by tractors as the assault failed.
Russian troops had anticipated being welcomed in Ukraine, and in some cases carried parade dress in the belief that after a blitzkrieg, the tanks would be used to stage a parade in Kyiv’s streets. Instead, they were picked off by Ukrainian artillery and infantry using anti-tank weapons.
There has been little sign of an improvement in tank tactics, with several dozen tanks estimated to have been lost in fighting since late January in a so far unsuccessful attempt to seize the Donbas town of Vuhledar. By using reconnaissance drones, Ukraine has been able knock out tanks with its artillery.
But, while the battlefield losses are notable, Russia retains a large number of old tanks in long-term storage, currently estimated at 5,000, meaning Moscow can continue to pursue an attritional strategy for some time to come.
graph
Ukraine, however, has seen its tank count go up to 953 from 858 because it has partly offset its own losses by capturing an estimated 500 from Russia, of which it has “pressed a fair amount into service”, according to the IISS analyst Henry Boyd. It has also had significant donations from Poland, the Czech Republic and other states with Soviet-era armour, but its tank force is currently still half the size of Russia’s.
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Kyiv is hoping to receive a wave of western tanks and fighting vehicles over the next couple of months, which it plans to use to achieve a battlefield breakthrough. German defence minister Boris Pistorius however cautioned on Wednesday it so far only has “half a battalion” of Leopard 2 tanks to send to Ukraine, 14 newer A6 type Leopard tanks in addition to three from Portugal.
Poland has also committed to sending a battalion of Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv and is currently training Ukrainian troops to use them but Pistorius said “many” were not fit for battle.
Ben Barry, a land warfare analyst, said he reckoned Ukraine would ultimately receive about a quarter of the 1,000 tanks and fighting vehicles it had sought.
That might give it “tactical advantage”, Barry said, if accompanied by enough ammunition and spare parts. Even so, the analyst and former tank commander said, it was not clear “that Kyiv has enough combat power to rapidly eject Russian forces”.
Barry concluded that, as a result, “we can expect another bloody year” in which the fighting would be unpredictable – after a period in which it is estimated that least 200,000 people have been killed or wounded on both sides.
Additional reporting by Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) announced a plan to construct the city’s second cable bridge at Mir Alam Tank in the old city in December 2021. Several announcements were made by the Municipal Administration Department in this regard and it was claimed that with the construction of the second cable bridge in the city of Hyderabad, tourism activities will be increased.
The department had announced the commencement of construction work of the cable bridge at a cost of Rs 220 crore, but since then there has been no progress in this project. It is being said that unless the budget for these works is released, steps to start development works are not possible.
Ten months after the HMDA sought a detailed report for the construction of the cable bridge at Mir Alam Tank, experts handed over it and the authority announced to approve the project, however, the inauguration ceremony of the project was not held so far.
The construction of the cable bridge at Mir Alam Tank will not only record an increase in tourism activities but will also provide a lot of facilities to the people of the surrounding areas. The 2.5 km cable bridge will also provide a lot of relief to pedestrians.
Ottawa: Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand is set to announce that his country will be sending four battle tanks to Ukraine.
In addition to the initial four Leopard 2 tanks, Canada is considering sending more tanks at a later date, CTV News reported, citing government sources.
The Canadian Armed Forces currently has 82 German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks, but they are in various states of serviceability, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the report.
On Wednesday, Germany and the US announced they would be organising the shipment of dozens of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
The most radical changes are on the inside, which has been redesigned to take advantage of new technology. The control mechanisms are digitized, most notably a new inter-vehicle information system that allows vehicles to exchange information continuously and automatically. Using the new technology, commanders can rapidly track the location of friendly vehicles, identify enemy positions and process artillery requests.
But federal policy forbids the export of Abrams with classified armor packages used by the U.S. military, which includes depleted uranium, according to a fourth person with knowledge of the policy. The U.S. strips the vehicles of this secret armor “recipe” before selling them to other countries. There are other armor packages the U.S. can provide for foreign military sales customers.
The Pentagon is planning to provide Ukraine the A2 version in this “exportable” form, according to one defense official and two other people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Questions remain over the timeline of when the Abrams tanks can be delivered to Ukraine. The tanks are assembled in one place only — a government-owned, General Dynamics-operated plant in Lima, Ohio. That facility can produce 12 tanks per month, but the line is now full of new tank orders for Taiwan and Poland — orders it would be difficult and likely controversial to put on the backburner.
The Army is providing multiple options for senior leaders to determine the way ahead, the service’s acquisition chief, Doug Bush, told reporters Wednesday.
Poland has ordered 250 A2 tanks that will be delivered starting in 2025, but in the meantime is receiving an emergency infusion of 116 M1A1 tanks recently retired by the Marine Corps. Warsaw asked for the tanks to quickly replace the 250 Soviet-era T-72 tanks it gave Ukraine last year, and the shuttering of the Marine Corps tank units made hundreds of well-maintained tanks available immediately.
Taiwan ordered 108 M1A2 tanks in 2019, and the first are expected to be delivered in 2024.
General Dynamics no longer builds the M1 from scratch, but has a number of “M1 seed vehicles” that are bare-bone tanks. When new orders come in, General Dynamics modifies these seed vehicles with new technology depending on which variant is selected.
But these upgrades are not “easy or fast,” Bush said.
Rather than sending Ukraine tanks from its own stocks, as it has done with previous weapons, the U.S. has said it is buying the Abrams from industry, meaning they won’t arrive on the battlefield for many months, or potentially years, given industrial constraints in upgrading them. In the meantime, the U.S. will train Ukrainian forces on how to maintain and operate the tanks, as well as “combined arms maneuver” tactics to help them integrate the weapons into their overall operations.
Either Abrams version would be a significant upgrade from the Soviet-era tanks Ukraine now operates, in firepower, accuracy and armor. But once they arrive, Ukrainian forces will be challenged to keep them in operation, experts said.
Those challenges are why the Biden administration pushed the delivery of German-made Leopard tanks, which are easier to maintain and train on. The first Leopards from Germany and other European countries will likely start arriving in Ukraine this spring.
Unlike other tanks that use diesel, the Abrams has a jet turbine engine that guzzles JP-8 jet fuel, which is more expensive and harder to maintain. They are also tricky to maintain, and any crew error could trigger the engine to blow.
Meanwhile, they require a massive infrastructure, including M88 recovery vehicles to repair broken parts on the battlefield, to operate.
“The M1 is a complex weapon system that is challenging to maintain, as we’ve talked about,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday. “That was true yesterday; it’s true today; it will be true in the future.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Washington: US President Joe Biden announced that Washington is sending 31 heavy M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as part of Washington’s continued support for the war-torn nation.
The US-made military vehicle is one of the most modern battle tanks in the world and requires extensive training to operate.
Addressing reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Biden said the decision to send the tanks came after his conversation earlier in the day “with our NATO Allies — German Chancellor (Olaf) Scholz, French President (Emmanuel) Macron, UK Prime Minister (Rishi) Sunak, and the Italian Prime Minister (Giorgia) Meloni — to continue our close coordination in our full support of Ukraine”.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin expected Europe and the US to weaken our resolve… He was wrong from the beginning and he continues to be wrong,” he said.
According to the President, a Ukrainian tank battalion typically consists of 31 tanks, which is why that number has been agreed upon.
“The Abrams tanks are the most capable tanks in the world. They’re also extremely complex to operate and maintain, so we’re also giving Ukraine the parts and equipment necessary to effectively sustain these tanks on the battlefield,” he said.
Biden’s announcement came just hours after Germany said it would send 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks to the battlefield.
Berlin also cleared the way for other European countries to send German-made tanks from their own stocks.
In his address, Biden said he was grateful to Chancellor Scholz for providing German Leopard 2 tanks and will lead an effort to organise the European contribution of two tank battalions for Ukraine.
“I want to thank the Chancellor for his leadership and his steadfast commitment to our collective efforts to support Ukraine. Germany has really stepped up, and the Chancellor has been a strong, strong voice for unity, a close friend, and for the level of effort we’re going to continue.”
Besides the US and Germany, the UK had recently announced that it was donating Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, while rance is contributing AMX-10s, armoured fighting vehicles.
In addition to the Leopard tanks, Germany is also sending a Patriot missile battery and the Netherlands is donating a Patriot missile and launchers.
France, Canada, the UK, Slovakia and Norway have all donated critical air defence systems.
Biden also said that “Poland is sending armoured vehicles, Sweden is donating infantry fighting vehicles, Italy is giving artillery, Denmark and Estonia are sending howitzers, Latvia is providing more Stinger missiles, Lithuania is providing anti-aircraft guns, and Finland recently announced its largest package of security assistance to date”.
“Together with our allies and partners, we’ve sent more than 3,000 armoured vehicles, more than 8,000 artillery systems, more than 2 million rounds of artillery ammunition, and more than 50 advanced multi-launch rocket systems, anti-ship and air defence systems, all to help Ukraine counter brutal aggression that is happening because of Russia,” he added.
The twin announcements by the US and Germany was hailed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who said it was a turning point that would allow its military to regain momentum and take back occupied territory almost a year after Moscow invaded.
“An important step on the path to victory. Today the free world is united as never before for a common goal — liberation of Ukraine,” he said.
Biden “knew the only way Germany would do Leopards is if we did Abrams and allied unity is the most important thing to him. So Secretary Austin sent a proposal on how to make it happen,” one U.S. official said.
On Wednesday, Biden bristled at the notion that Germany made him approve the Abrams transfer after all.
“Germany didn’t force me to change my mind. We wanted to make sure we were all together. That’s what we were going to do all along. And that’s what we’re doing right now,” he told reporters after announcing the decision.
Moments earlier, Scholz had taken a victory lap in the Bundestag. His unmovable stance that Abrams needed to accompany Leopards on their journey to Europe’s east was heeded by the world’s most powerful nation.
“It is right that we never provide these weapons systems on our own, but always in close cooperation,” Scholz said.
The move to provide Western tanks marks a major new phase of the allies’ support of the war effort, allowing Ukraine to combine more than 100 tanks from Europe and the U.S. with armored troop carriers and artillery to shred Russia’s front lines in the east and south.
But the tank debate also signaled the first significant and open break between Kyiv’s first- and third-largest backers. In recent weeks officials from Washington and Berlin had debated whether to agree to send tanks and whether to announce the decision in tandem. The public tussle raised questions among officials inside the Western alliance about the degree to which the coalition can remain solidified in its support for Ukraine in the coming months.
This story is based on interviews with 18 officials in the U.S. and Europe, many of whom asked not to be named in order to freely discuss internal deliberations. How Biden’s team got here is a story of bureaucratic infighting and diplomatic brinkmanship, both in Washington and Berlin, and negotiations between allies that at times got heated and spilled into the public.
Cracks in the alliance
Initial American resistance to sending Abrams tanks, and German intransigence, delayed a move that, critics argued, should have happened much earlier.
In a late December visit to Washington, Zelenskyy and his team requested the U.S. send more advanced weapons to Kyiv in the coming weeks, including tanks and long-range missiles, ahead of an expected Russian offensive this spring.
In meetings at the White House, it became increasingly clear that the U.S. would not budge on the missile request. U.S. officials did not rule out sending tanks –– at some point. The question for Washington was whether it could convince other European allies to step up and supply tanks at the same time.
But cracks in the alliance began to emerge, as both the Pentagon and German leaders dug in their heels.
In public and private, senior DoD officials insisted that it may not be wise to send the Abrams at this moment. The weapons were too complex for Ukrainian forces to train on quickly — and too difficult to keep running once they started trudging through the country’s muddy winter terrain, they argued.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” said Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, after a trip to Kyiv earlier this month. “It may or may not be the right system.”
This angered senior administration officials who felt the Pentagon was scuttling a move that could help Ukraine and tighten bonds with a key ally. The comments also frustrated the Ukrainian government, which has proven time and again its troops can quickly learn new technologies decades ahead of the Soviet equipment they had been using.
“DoD initially says there’s no way we could provide X, Y, Z because of various supposed roadblocks,” a senior administration official said.
“And, lo and behold, DoD announces the provision of X, Y, and Z months later to great fanfare,” the official continued. “But their reflexive answer is no.”
Another U.S. official disputed that account and pointed to Austin, the U.S. defense chief, being responsive to the Ukrainians’ needs when it came to sending Harpoon missiles, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missiles, Bradley and Stryker vehicles, and training for all of them.
“The White House and State are generally viewing the provision of assistance one-dimensionally, focused only on the escalation dynamics,” another U.S. official said in the Pentagon’s defense. “DoD has to worry about our own military readiness, the logistics of providing equipment, sensitive tech disclosure, and training Ukrainians.”
But Kahl’s and others’ comments also frustrated defense industry executives who felt the Pentagon was making disparaging remarks about U.S.-manufactured equipment. Weeks before, Laura Cooper, a Pentagon official charged with overseeing Ukraine policy, called the Abrams a “gas guzzler.”
The U.S. does not have to advocate for sending the Abrams, one industry insider said, but administration officials shouldn’t criticize the tank. That’s especially true since another country in the region, Poland, is buying M1s from General Dynamics. Other countries such as Morocco, Iraq, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have purchased export versions of the tank.
Pressure on Berlin
Over the last few weeks, members of Biden’s national security team — Austin, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and national security adviser Jake Sullivan — met frequently with their German and European counterparts to figure out the next steps on Ukraine.
Throughout their talks, German officials felt that the Pentagon was more reluctant than the White House, but there was also a growing awareness that Berlin’s insistence on the American tank was increasingly upsetting U.S. officials, who stressed that Washington was already supplying widespread military support and that it was Berlin’s moment to step up.
Pressure within Europe continued to mount on Germany to make a move. On Jan. 11, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron and discussed how to convince Scholz to drop his resistance on tanks.
Macron suggested he and Morawiecki tag-team Scholz into submission ahead of last Friday’s meeting at Ramstein Air Base. A few days later, Morawiecki traveled to Berlin, where he met with conservative opposition leaders, but not Scholz.
Back in Warsaw on Jan. 18, Morawiecki broke a major diplomatic taboo by threatening to send Ukraine Leopards without waiting for export approval from Germany. Scholz’s chancellery was livid, but officials there knew they were running out of time.
Scholz last week told Biden on a phone call and U.S. lawmakers in Davos that no Leopards would make their way east unless Abrams accompanied them. In Scholz’s mind, the two were inextricably tethered.
Scholz has been adamant in his discussions with Biden that supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine marks such a qualitatively new step that the U.S., as the world’s biggest military power but also Germany’s guarantee for nuclear deterrence, must be involved.
They also wanted to demonstrate unity toward Putin. “It was important to the chancellor from the very beginning … that we take every step with as much unity as possible,” said Scholz’s spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit.
The allies had for the past year kept a surprisingly enduring unified front on Ukraine, contrary to the assumptions made by many before the conflict started, above Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
But the debate over the Leopard was turning toxic quickly and most of all unusually public. At Davos, the Polish President Andrzej Duda and Lithuania’s Gitanas Nauseda voiced their frustration with Germany and Scholz in private conversations. By then, Scholz was ignoring Duda’s calls to meet together and discuss the next steps on the Leopard. For his part, Scholz returned the hostility from the new eastern allies of NATO. He has been particularly angry with the right-wing Polish government’s sniping at Germany.
After Davos, the hope in Washington and European capitals was that everyone could agree on a path forward during a meeting of 50 countries at Ramstein Air Base in Germany last Friday. There, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov gathered with the defense chiefs of 12 European countries who field Leopard tanks, including Germany. But Berlin said it was still mulling it over.
The frustration prompted Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau to tweet: “Arming Ukraine in order to repel the Russian aggression is not some kind of decision-making exercise. Ukrainian blood is shed for real. This is the price of hesitation over Leopard deliveries. We need action, now.”
‘Better late than never’
With no deal with Washington in sight, the chancellor was under increasing pressure from his own coalition partners as well as European countries, especially Poland. After the failure to achieve a breakthrough, attempts to rope in the U.S. continued over the weekend, with two men — new German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who had only been appointed days before, and Scholz’s powerful right-hand man, chancellery minister Wolfgang Schmidt — playing a key role, two officials said.
Biden was constantly updated by his senior staff on the talks as he heard arguments for and against sending Abrams.
The president knew Ukraine needed Leopards — which are abundant across Europe and easier for the Ukrainians to use and maintain than the Abrams — on the battlefield as soon as possible. He started to lean toward sending the M1s after seeing bipartisan support for the transfer, and realizing the Germans would not budge.
Ultimately, Biden decided to send American tanks after Austin recommended providing 31 M1s, the size of a full Ukrainian army battalion.
The U.S. could have sent just one tank to seal the deal with Germany, but Austin decided to send a full battalion. This shows the decision was “not a symbolic gesture, but something the secretary thought was the right thing to do,” the second official said.
Hours after reports of Biden’s decision emerged, news surfaced that Scholz was ready to approve the Leopards. But not everyone in Germany’s ruling coalition was happy. Anton Hofreiter, a lawmaker from the Green party, one of the coalition partners of Scholz’s Social Democrats, said the chancellor lost time by insisting on the U.S. linkage and antagonized close allies.
“It would have been better for Germany’s international reputation to decide more quickly. In particular, many countries in Europe were annoyed to make the delivery dependent on the United States,” Hofreiter said.
“But better late than never,” he added.
Even now the U.S. administration — which never ruled out sending the Abrams — is warning that it will be months before Ukraine will be able to use the tanks on the battlefield. But officials said the decision was made to begin buying the tanks now so that when they arrive on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces will be able to maintain and operate them.
DoD is now working through the logistical challenges of delivering the Abrams and supporting them on the battlefield, said a senior administration official. The military will be setting up a “very careful” training program to teach the Ukrainians how to maintain, sustain and operate the weapons, “which do require a good deal of assistance,” the official said.
At the same time, DoD is training Ukrainians on combined arms maneuver tactics, which will allow Ukrainian forces to integrate the Abrams and other armored capabilities into their overall operations.
In a Wednesday morning call with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, Austin didn’t give a timeline for when the first Abrams might arrive. The priority for now, he added, should be on training the Ukrainians on Leopard tanks, along with U.S.-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and new mobile howitzers and other heavy armor recently announced by Western partners.
In an interview, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was far more optimistic about the timeframe.
“We are aware of the fact that training soldiers to operate Abrams tanks takes months. But we are also convinced that the United States have decided to provide Ukrainians with the insight, rapid training program for tank cooperation,” he said. “And this may mean that jointly with the highly motivated Ukrainian fighters, this training might take weeks rather than months.”
Now that the dustup appears to have been settled for now, not everyone is ecstatic at how the whole process played out.
“Germany is still very afraid of Russia. That is the reality,” said Oleksii Goncharenko, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament. “They are still playing these games about defensive weapons versus offensive weapons. It is nonsense because the war is a defensive war for us.”
A senior Polish official said Scholz’s delay was looked at “with embarrassment.” The chancellor “bears full political and moral responsibility for his decisions, and he will be accountable for his decision to voters and history.”
Biden allies are happy, however, with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) telling POLITICO he was “encouraged” by all that developed over the last 24 hours. “It’s a positive announcement from our friends and partners in Germany.”
Erin Banco, Nahal Toosi, Lili Bayer and Lee Hudson contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“You see multiple countries across the broad coalition we’ve built stepping up to send a strong message of support to our long-term commitment to Ukraine,” said a senior administration official, who asked for anonymity to speak ahead of Biden’s announcement.
The news comes after weeks of discussions between U.S. and European leaders, particularly the Germans, who have long resisted sending their own Leopard 2 tanks. Biden has spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz multiple times this month about providing assistance to Ukraine, and the two nations announced last month that they would send Patriot missile systems to help defend Ukrainian cities, said the senior administration official.
Top members of Biden’s national security team — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and national security adviser Jake Sullivan — also met frequently with their German and European counterparts, including most recently at a meeting of defense ministers at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, last week.
Top U.S. officials urged Germany to send their Leopard 2s, which are abundant across Europe and easier for the Ukrainians to use and maintain than the Abrams. But Berlin stood firm, with senior German leaders privately telling Washington that they would only send Leopards if the U.S. sent Abrams.
The president knew Ukraine needed Leopards on the battlefield as soon as possible, so he worked with his national security team to approve the Abrams. He ultimately decided to send American tanks after Austin’s recommendation, according to two other U.S. officials.
Biden “knew the only way Germany would do Leopards is if we did Abrams and allied unity is the most important thing to him. So Secretary Austin sent a proposal on how to make it happen,” one of the officials said.
The U.S. could have sent just one tank to seal the deal with Germany, but Austin decided to send a full battalion, said the second U.S. official. This shows the decision was “not a symbolic gesture, but something the secretary thought was the right thing to do.”
As news of Biden’s decision emerged in media reports Tuesday, including POLITICO, the government in Berlin announced on Wednesday that Germany and its European partners planned to “quickly” send two Leopard 2 tank battalions to Kyiv. Poland, Spain, Norway and Finland are also likely to join in the coalition of nations sending Leopards.
The decision comes after Pentagon leaders argued publicly and privately that now may not be the right time to send the Abrams. The tanks are too complicated for Ukrainian forces to learn to operate quickly and maintain on the battlefield, they argued.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” said Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, after a trip to Kyiv. “It may or may not be the right system.”
The administration’s thinking on the challenges the Abrams presents hasn’t changed. But the decision was made to procure them now so that when they arrive on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces will be able to maintain and operate them.
The tanks won’t be drawn from DoD’s stocks, as has been the case for other military aid. Rather, DoD will procure the weapons with money provided through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This means it will be months before Ukraine actually gets them.
“There are technical aspects to the Abrams, which makes it a little bit more challenging than some systems that we have provided,” said a second senior administration official. “There’s supply chain issues that have to be dealt with, certainly training and maintenance issues that has to be dealt with.
“That’s why we’re doing it this way, through USAI, so that we can take the time, not too much, but take enough time to make sure that when they get into the field that the Ukrainians can use them and maintain them and keep them in the fight effectively offensively on our own.”
Another reason to procure the Abrams through contracts rather then sending them directly from DoD stocks is because the Pentagon does not have sufficient tanks in its inventory to transfer them to Ukraine, said a third senior administration official.
“As with other capabilities, you’ve seen us do this before if we do not have readily within U.S. stocks, then we go the procurement route to make sure that we can procure the right capability for Ukraine,” the person said. “That is what we’re doing here with the Abrams.”
The M1s will build on the capabilities the Pentagon has provided in previous aid packages, including hundreds of armored vehicles, air defenses and artillery shells, officials said.
DoD is now working through the challenges of delivering the Abrams and supporting them on the battlefield. The military will be setting up a “very careful” training program to teach the Ukrainians how to maintain, sustain and operate the weapons, “which do require a good deal of assistance,” the official said.
In addition to the tanks themselves, DoD is also procuring eight M88 recovery vehicles, which are designed to repair or replace damaged Abrams parts during a fight, as well as extricate vehicles that become bogged down. These vehicles “go with the Abrams to be able to provide coverage of your operation, to make sure Ukrainians will be able to keep these Abrams up and running,” the official said.
At the same time, DoD is training Ukrainians on combined arms maneuver tactics, which will allow Ukrainian forces to integrate the Abrams and other armored capabilities into their overall operations.
All of these weapons are aimed at helping Ukraine continue fighting Russia over the coming weeks and months, particularly in the wide-open terrain of the northeastern Donbas region, said the third senior administration official. The Abrams, in particular, is reflective of the administration’s long-term commitment to the war.
“We’ve said all along, the capabilities we’re going to provide are going to evolve with the needs of the war. And I think that’s what you’re seeing here,” said the second senior administration official.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
BERLIN — Finally Germany has agreed to allow its state-of-the-art Leopard 2 tanks to be donated to Ukraine, in a marked shift from its leaders’ reluctance to significantly increase military support to help the country fight Russia.
The announcement by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, coupled with an anticipated decision by the US to send about 30 M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. After Pressure has been building for weeks on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government to send the tanks and allow NATO allies to do the same before expected spring offensives by both sides.
Im Kabinett hat der @Bundeskanzler heute weitere Unterstützung an die #Ukraine mit der Lieferung von #Leopard 2 Panzern angekündigt. Auch Partnerländern wird eine entsprechende Genehmigung erteilt. Das ist eng mit den internationalen Partnern abgestimmt. https://t.co/e31Kf3V1oi
Scholz told his Cabinet of his decision that Germany will further strengthen its military support for Ukraine, German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said. “The Federal Government has decided to make Leopard 2 battle tanks available to the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stands next to a Leopard 2 main battle tank of the German armed forces while visiting an army training center in Ostenholz, Germany, on Oct. 17, 2022. David Hecker/Getty Image
Germany’s decision paves the way for other countries such as Poland, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway to supply some of their Leopard tanks to Ukraine, going some way towards delivering the hundreds of tanks that Ukraine says it needs.
The Kremlin warned on Wednesday that if Western countries supply Ukraine with heavy tanks they will be destroyed on the battlefield.
“These tanks burn like all the rest. They are just very expensive,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The Kremlin’s warning came as a Moscow-backed official said Russian forces had advanced in Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine that Russia has been trying to capture for months.
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The transfer of U.S. and German tanks would mark a major development in the West’s effort to arm Ukraine. Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have spent weeks pleading for tanks as Kyiv prepares for fresh Russian offensives in the country’s east.
One of the two U.S. officials said the Biden administration is considering sending around 30 Abrams tanks.
The vehicles would likely come through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, according to a third person familiar with the issue. The program allows Washington to finance the purchase of weapons and equipment for Ukraine, as opposed to pulling them from existing U.S. stockpiles.
The Pentagon never took tanks off the table, stressed a fourth U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of an announcement. But in recent weeks U.S. officials have publicly cited the difficulties of providing the M1s, the Army’s main battle tank. They have said the Abrams made little operational sense for Ukraine at this moment because they guzzle jet fuel and require long supply lines to maintain.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, told reporters last week after a trip to Kyiv. “It may or may not be the right system.”
The developments come after weeks of tense discussions between Washington, Berlin and their European allies. Since Scholz met with U.S. lawmakers last week, the German government has shifted its stance, at one point denying it had linked the transfers of the Abrams and Leopards.
A parade of Democrats and Republicans has pressured the Biden administration to grant Berlin’s request to send U.S. tanks first.
“If the Germans continue to say we will only send or release Leopards on the condition that Americans send Abrams, we should send Abrams,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, told POLITICO moments before Sky News Arabia first broke news of the decision on Tuesday.
The M1 Abrams tanks currently in the U.S. Army’s motor pools would first need to be stripped of sensitive communications and other equipment before being sent to Ukraine, making it an expensive and time-consuming process.
A handful of countries operate less modern versions of the Abrams, including Australia, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco, while Poland has 250 on order slated to begin arriving in 2024.
Egypt by far has the most Abrams tanks in service, with over 1,000 older M1A1 models as the result of a decades-long co-production deal with the United States.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
