Ukraine's Weary M-1 Abrams Brigade Is Back in Action
Fifteen months on the front line earned the brigade a six-week break
The Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade is one of the army’s best formations—and also one of its most over-worked. The unit fought in all the hardest battles of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine from June 2023 through September this year before finally getting its first major break.
Six weeks later, the brigade is back in action. A video the unit posted online this week depicts some of its American-made M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and M-1 Abrams tanks blasting Russian troops apparently somewhere inside the 270-square-mile Ukrainian-held salient in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
“The Bradley infantry fighting vehicle in interaction with the Abrams tank is a terrible force and terror for the invaders!” the 47th Mechanized Brigade boasted on social media. But the bravado belies how few tanks the unit has left after more than a year in combat.
The 47th Brigade is the sole operator of M-2s and M-1s. While the United States has been generous with M-2s—donating more than 300 of the 33-ton, 10-person vehicles—it has donated just 31 of the 69-ton, four-person M-1s. And the 47th has lost at least eight M-1s to Russian fire. Another eight have been damaged.
Given how long it usually takes foreign contractors to repair Ukraine’s battle-damaged Western-style tanks—months, in the case of the most sophisticated ex-German Leopard 2A6s—it’s possible the 47th Mechanized Brigade currently has access to just 15 working tanks. Half a battalion.
Help is coming. After a year of dithering, the Australian government this month finally announced it would donate its surplus Abrams to Ukraine. The Australian army is replacing its early-2000s M-1A1s with newer M-1A2s. The older tanks are nearly identical to the M-1s the United States donated to Ukraine.
Forty-nine Australian tanks are Ukraine-bound—enough to rebuild the 47th Brigade’s sole tank battalion and also form a second battalion. That would leave almost no M-1s in reserve, however. Alternatively, the brigade could bring the current Abrams battalion back up to 31 tanks and keep the excess tanks in reserve.
The latter is the wiser move for a long war. At the current rate of loss—approximately one tank a month—a two-battalion Ukrainian M-1 force would become a one-battalion force in around a year, anyway.
And it’s apparent the general staff in Kyiv intends to keep the 47th Mechanized Brigade on the front line without much rest, potentially for the duration of the war. After all, 15 months on the line earned the unit just six weeks of rest. The unit’s 2,000 troopers should internalize the idea that they’re going to be in action for the next 15 months.
Read more:
