Does Russia have any of its good stuff left, or is it going to be the cream of NATO land forces up against Russian conscripts in 1960s armor?
The Abrams is powered by a gas turbine that runs on jet fuel. They can’t just pull up to a local gas station.
It was a Fallout reference.
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I don’t think Dark Brandon is going to send them all these tanks without the logistics base and fuel too.
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That would be like driving an EV with no charging infrastructure in place.
No, it’s the modern gaming model. The tanks are free but the fuel and ammo are in app purchases.
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I refrained from adding that because I’m not 100% sure that’s right. Abrams have turbine engines that run best on jet fuel (kerosene), but, like many turbines can run on other combustible fluids. I think they MAY be able to run on light diesel. I’m going to look into it.
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I believe the Abrams can run on jet fuel (kerosene or naptha), gasoline, diesel, marine diesel. Basically, if it will ignite, it will power the Abrams. It may even run on bacon grease.
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So it’s a battalion of 31 Abrams 2 tanks being sent. Enough to be locally significant, certainly against any T-72 variant.
Grease for the treads courtesy of Wagner Group dead.
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This is right and was one of the reasons that a turbine was chosen as the design. It freed up significant logistics resources. If you look at a modern Calvary battle plan, it’s unsurprising that capturing fuel depots is one of the keys to success. It does not matter how crappy the quality of an adversary’s stored fuel is. Everyone was horrified when the Iraqis burned the Kuwaiti oil production fields as they fled in Desert Storm. They did it because they had heard that the Abrams could literally run on the Ratawi light, sweet crude. And because they are jerks.
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This thread caused me to start wondering today about how old the Abrams is. What was its precursor, the M60 Sherman or some shit? Have they been upgraded a bunch or are they still pretty much the same models Schwarzkopf commanded? Is there an Abrams-replacement in the works, or did we bank on tank warfare being a thing of the past?
The latest Abrams, the J.J., started out with a lot of promise but turned into a total mess.
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Numerous updates through the years.
Mostly the latter.
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I hear the latest Abrams has a real issue with lens flare.
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I think it has had substantial optics and armor upgrades. I’ve read that the thermal imaging on Bradleys is scarily advanced so probably something like that. I’m sure there are newer, more advanced tanks out there but it’s still a force.
Two advantages for the American Abrams are they are a little less prone to over engineering (Germany) and they have actually been fighting with their tanks over the past twenty or so years. Would be curious to know if they have been training Ukranian tank crews in the Abrams during the last year. If not, a pretty big learning curve awaits.
My guess is they’ve been training people. Probably trainers. Remember when they were like “Okay we’re gonna send HIMARS” and like two days later HIMARS were raining down on Russians?
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So, the current versions have the same name and basically the same shape but that shape similarity is due to initial design excellence more than the fact that it is the same tank. The initial versions were an engineering marvel. For example, they used a composite ceramic armor bound by dense metal plate backing that was nearly impervious to explosive and kinetic ordinance. That has been upgraded to ceramic and depleted uranium armor plating‘s with reactive armor in critical places, dramatically increasing survivability on an already elegant and effective design. To put in perspective how far ahead even the original designs were, right before production started in 1979, engineers made the decision to switch to a multi channel, multipath fiber optic data bus. In 1979. Let that sink in. This created an upgradeability path unseen anywhere in the military industrial complex at the time and anticipated leaps forward in computing technology that weren’t even dreamt of at the time. The tank is really a system of systems designed with agile, incremental improvement at the core. Again, engineered in the 70s with production starting in 1979.
I may be a bit biased in my thinking here. The lead engineer was my dad.
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