Estimates indicate that by 2030 the country will have 366 U.S. Abrams, 360 K2s, 235 Leopards, and 150 PT-91 Twardys, while it is also working with the U.S. to establish production capabilities for Abrams spare parts.
This force could smash russia to pieces, especially given how degraded the russian military is at this point. Russia can produce 1000 tanks fairly quickly but their tanks are critically flawed and there is no cohesive institutional attempt to actually keep tank crews alive and upskill them continually in the russian military… whereas for Poland each of those ~1000 tank crews are and will be highly trained and treated as valuable, skilled professionals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtkg2DEpalg
A good rundown of the Sepv3 Abrams, it is definitely a biased perspective but it is very thorough and conveys well why russian design lineage tanks are categorically outclassed by these in technology, doctrine and crew protection.
Like one third SK/ Asian, another third DE/ European and the last North-American. Sounds like a realistic spread, and a reasonable setup. Heard that the Abrams are high and expensive AF in maintenance, so setting up spare parts is a good step.
The Abrams uses a turbine engine like a jet aircraft, which inherently has higher fuel costs and takes more maintenance but the flipside is that a turbine engine can deliver intense bursts of power in the way a diesel/traditional engine can’t and this is what gives the Abrams its tactical maneuverability and agility despite its immense weight. It is very easy to see if you watch footage of an Abrams maneuvering aggressively how it doesn’t move like other tanks Note: this is why I would classify russian turtle tanks as true “heavy tanks” and the Abrams as a Main Battle Tank even though the Abrams may be heavier on paper, it is the inability to manuever that makes Heavy Tanks a failed concept.
As far as I am aware elite russian tank units preferred the turbine engine T-80 over other russian tank designs for the same reason, it allows the authority to move quickly when it matters the most, too bad for russians the T-80 is now extinct lol…
longer thought
The thing though that really separates the Abrams from the K2 and Leopard is the long tail incremental improvements in stabilization, optics, auxillary weapon systems, targetting and other systems that help the tank work as a cohesive and aware system (The CROWS system being a prime example). This has only become radically more important with drones which re-emphasize the focus on Abrams development after the Cold War on better optics and better auxillary weapons to retain situational awareness and quickly engage guerilla forces… which has lead naturally into a platform well suited to detecting drones as well as mounting kinetic antidrone systems like the Bullfrog.
Further a surveillance and loitering drone launcher has already been tested and integrated into the Abrams in a prexisting turret location replacing the turret loaders sponson box.
The reason the US military has jumped ship on developing the SepV3 into the Sepv4 Abrams and moved to create the M1E3 is that the next big leap in tanks are turning tanks into massive batteries with electric drivetrains that can lower heat emissions to reduce detectability and buckets of electrical power that can be shunted into engine torque or into counter drone laser systems… but even in that future the Sepv3 still compares far more favorably to the M1E3 than pretty much all other contemporary tanks because again traditional fossil fuel engines simply cannot create the bursts of torque that electric engines can.
It is wise that Poland is not putting all of their eggs in one basket especially given US politics, I don’t mean to minimize that angle of concern at all but it is worth recognizing what it is that makes the Abrams so dominant in order to understand the geopolitical picture better… most people do not understand the Abrams at all or what it is meant to do.
Can’t the Abram’s engine also accept multiple fuel types, meaning logistics are simpler?
Yeah but here is the thing about tanks, they are incredibly expensive, they guzzle fuel, they are a massive pain in the ass and are absolutely useless and almost incomprehensible to people in peacetime… so if you are going to go through the huge amount of work to bring them to bear at the most critical point of a war you are probably going to put good fuel in them because it is an easy way to eliminate risks of problems and after all that if the engine stalls than it was all for nothing… but yes presumably you can run them on a wide range of fuels I just don’t know if in practice that is done as anything but testing an “emergency” feature.
The point of these isn’t to use them all the time though, they aren’t meant to singlehandedly blow everything up and traverse the entire battlefield while doing it, they are for applying an industrial amount of force at the most intense and critical point of a land war. They are for entering a space nothing else can survive and smashing a path through or responding to and preventing the enemy from doing so.
This force could smash russia to pieces
Least deranged little napoleon
How so? What do I desire to conquer here?
tell me how that American bootheel tastes, since you’re so dedicated to licking it, American forces can’t take on Iran competently 😂
Hey if you want to pretend battalions of Abrams and Bradleys wouldn’t steamroll a bunch of scared, confused russians, belarusians and mercenaries human trafficked into frontline combat charging into Poland on top of their BTRs and BMPs because their armor is so thin it is safer not to even trust it in the first place…
Sure go ahead knock yourself out, mistake my understanding of war for US jingoism, it makes no matter to me I am concerned with the reality on the ground not grandiose, generalizing statements about power and capability.
If these Abrams and Bradleys are so tough why did we get out ass handed to us in Afghanistan?
Ughh why do I need to explain baby stuff like this, the Abrams and Bradleys are for smashing down the door and the door was smashed down with complete authority in Afghanistan, it is unlikely Abrams were needed to overcome organized military resistance and I am not even sure they were used in the initial invasion of Afghanistan.
It is not the fault of the design of the Abrams and Bradleys if the US government is terminally obsessed with pursuing the occupation of a country that did not want us there. You are making a categorical error here of confusing the capabilities of weapons systems with the politics of how they are used.
If you look at how the US and russia performed in their invasions of Afghanistan it is night and day in military competency, but ultimately the reason the US got its ass kicked by Afghanistan is because Afghanistan has been kicking the asses of invaders for far longer than the US has been a country while fighting on that precise terrain we blindly trampled upon, so I don’t consider getting beaten by Afghanistan as even remotely a humiliation, they are some of the best light infantry guerilla fighters on earth.
Additionally, heavy mechanized armor is not the primary tool needed in highly mountainous terrain like Afghanistan, so I don’t really understand why you picked Afghanistan as an example.
I agree with most of what you’re saying, except for the whole Afghanistan kicking the ass of invaders, given that Afghanistan has been successfully conquered so many times throughout history, going further back than Alexander the Great (look at the genetic markup of the people living in the area to see that legacy still remaining, by the way).
Yes, occupying a country this underdeveloped and tribal is difficult, but that’s mostly because it’s difficult to administer a country (that isn’t really a nation state in the modern sense) this decentralized. Hell, even the Taliban (which aren’t even from Afghanistan) that “won” the war (because Trump handed the place to them to stick it to Biden) are finding out the hard way right now just how annoying it is to keep this mess together.
Afghanistan has been successfully…
occupied not conquered.
Afghanistan has never been as powerful or expansive as the empires that have invaded it, and as such resisting the initial invasion has never been how Afghanistan has resisted occupation.
It has been successfully occupied by countless empires though. Just scroll through the Wikipedia page on Afghanistan’s history and you see empire after empire conquering and then occupying it for time periods ranging from decades to centuries:
Clean distinctions like these never work for a place such as Afghanistan, it is a place that has been invaded and occupied countless times but I hesitate to say it has ever been conquered. You see a list of successful invasions and occupations I see a list of proof that no matter how powerful the empire is, it can never truly determine the will of the people living in Afghanistan no matter what the maps and borders say.
Aight, have fun Monsieur slopfountain, I will not bother you anymore
Since when were Abrams deployed against Iran? Also, Poland bought these on the open market from the US, just like they bought German and South Korean tanks, because they want to have a powerful tank force to defend themselves against Russia. Poland is an independent country, not a vassal of the US.
Not to mention, the whole US involvement in the Iran war under Trump and Kegsbreath is kind of like if you hand a toddler a loaded gun. The kid will probably do some damage, but not in a desirable way. Trump inherited the most powerful military in the world, but just like with his dad’s inheritance, he has absolutely no clue on how to use it and completely squandered its potential.
Not only would a different administration not have attacked Iran like this (or at all - Israel has been annoying the US with the idea for decades, until they found a moron who fell for it), even if they did, they wouldn’t have bungled it this much. The best weapons, intelligence, training and logistics in the world won’t help if you are systematically gutting military leadership and replacing it with sycophants, if you’re ignoring the advice of experts, leaving local allies unprepared and in the dark - and reveling in inane machismo, hatred and bloodlust instead of using even an ounce of strategic thinking.
Hell, they let sailors on an aircraft carrier suffer for months without resupplies in an idiotic attempt to hide the loss of a vital resupply base (which of course backfired). That’s the kind of “saving face” behavior you’d expect from vain autocrats the likes of Putin and Xi, not a Western nation.
When have the US deployed Abrams against the Russian Federation?
Anyway, have fun pounding out your several paragraphs Mr. Clancy I won’t bother you further 😂
