This report was updated 2/21/2023 at 11:20 am ET to include response from a Pentagon spokesperson.
IDEX 2023 — Nearly a month after announcing its decision to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the United States is still deciding which version is best and whether it will pull those vehicles from existing stockpiles or have them produced, according to a top US State Department official.
When Washington announced in late January that it was sending 31 Abrams tanks to Kyiv, it said those vehicles would be M1A2s and that the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative would be used to acquire them. That suggested the vehicles would be procured, rather than pulled from US stocks as part of presidential drawdown authority, a different mechanism to supply arms to Ukraine. However, that decision has not actually been finalized, according to Stanley Brown, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
“They potentially could be a combination of built and out of stockpiles,” he said during an interview with Breaking Defense on the sidelines of IDEX 2023 in the United Arab Emirates.
“We have Abrams in the inventory. We have different versions of Abrams, some older…, and I don’t know what specific ones that Ukraine will ultimately get,” he separately added. Brown said it is not clear when a final decision will be made or when those tanks may arrive in Ukraine.
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Such a move could potentially speed up the delivery of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, in part, because the US should have all the equipment for two US Army armored brigades — including about 87 late-model M1A2 tanks each — already on the continent, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of US Army forces in Europe, estimated last month.
“If the administration had the sense of urgency to help Ukraine win, then they’d bring Ukrainian tank crews and commanders to Poland or Germany to match them up with these tanks for training and then put them on a train to Ukraine to be employed how and where and when the Ukrainian General Staff is ready,” he wrote in a Jan. 26 email to Breaking Defense. “This could all happen within the next two or three months.”
On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Garron Garn declined to comment on any potential change of plans, redirecting Breaking Defense’s queries back to the State Department. However, Brown’s comments highlight the evolving calculus inside the Biden Administration around fielding new weapons to Ukrainian forces, showing a unified front with international partners and allies, and striking a balance between existing inventories and production lines.
For example, on Jan. 25 Washington announced it would send Abrams tanks to Ukraine just hours before Berlin said it too would free German-made Leopards for the fight but at a quicker clip.
Although the Biden administration went ahead with that announcement, it declined to disclose details about the plan except to say it would take months as opposed to weeks to get tanks to Ukraine, and those vehicles would not come from units or existing stockpiles. By using the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, it said it would have time to train Ukrainians how to use the vehicles and figure out the in-theater logistics footprint.
“While the deliveries will take some time, because this is a procurement, the United States will begin now to establish a comprehensive training program for their use,” one administration official said at the time. “These tanks are complex systems that require a significant amount of training and maintenance, so [the Department of Defense] is currently working through the mechanisms to deliver the fuel and equipment Ukraine will need to operate and to maintain the Abrams.”
Later that day, Assistant Secretary of the US Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Douglas Bush told reporters the service was creating a laundry list of options for Pentagon officials to consider before deciding which way to go.
“There are multiple courses of action, and it’s not just the tanks,” he said. “We have to be able to [deliver] tanks, support equipment, the training, the ammunition, the fuel… It’s really a bigger picture.”
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