Combined with IFVs, the Abrams can provide the ability to rapidly move troops while simultaneously delivering heavy direct fire against enemy positions and offering substantial protection to its crew.

The crews argue that this capability remains worthwhile even when the tank itself may eventually be lost.

One commander was asked whether deploying a roughly $5-million tank makes sense if a single sortie can result in its destruction.

“Yes, of course it makes sense to deploy it,” he replied.

“First and foremost — it saves the lives of the crew inside it.”

While one can certainly toss all russian armor in the bin and most early leopard tanks too for being too lightly armored to be relevant… along with the completely ineffective design of “turtle tanks”… one of the most dizzying results of warping of narratives around the Ukraine War has been the belief that the Abrams main battle tank was shown to be obsolete.

The reasons you don’t see more of Abrams tanks being used in Ukraine are (not exhaustively):

1.) Ukraine is highly secretive about where they are.

2.) Ukraine has a highly limited number of Abrams tanks that are not replaceable currently.

3.) Tank use is always rare and done in big pulses, never in warfare have tanks been “common” things to encounter on the battlefield except in the most setpiece, focused battles.

4.) Ukraine has only recently begun large scale counter offensives that require serious armor.

The Ukraine War proved the Abrams is by far and away the best tank in the world, and it also proved the Bradley is indeed a class defining vehicle for what an ideal IFV should look like.

The Ukraine War has also more crucially proved the design priorities of the Abrams were correct, centering valuing protecting the crew made Abrams better suited to dealing with the new threats from FPV drones, the reason Abrams tanks don’t blow their turrets is that the ammunition storage has blast doors that separate the crew from the shells and direct an uncontrolled detonation of them outwards not into the pressure cooker of the tank interior.

Another design priority the Abrams values is the ability to tactically manuever, reposition and have agency over battlefield positioning while retaining a precise capability to fire its main cannon on the move at ~30 kmph. If you watch footage of Abrams in combat in Ukraine you can see from the way they move and how dynamic they are that they are much more difficult target to pin down than most russian style tanks. Compared to the relatively similar British Challenger tank the emphasis on more maneuverability with somewhat less heavy armor has proved a decisively superior choice. Is the Abrams still too heavy? Of course…

Finally the Abrams prioritized from the beginning superior optics, sensors, and communications equipment that evolved into a mature remote weapons system (CROWS) that provides a clear starting point to build out oppressive counter drone kinetic systems (see the Bullfrog for an evolution of this type of design). See Ukrainian Armor’s similar C-UAS system that uses shotguns instead.

The media however refuses to acknowledge this as the media does not understand war, only what people trying to sell a sense of russian inevitability or trying to sell their new drone product tell them.

In my opinion no other weapon system demonstrates the disinformation and misinformation about the nature of war in Ukraine better than the Abrams, especially because it would be trivial for other nations to donate ~100 Abrams tanks if they actually wanted to and that would completely change the course of the war… it isn’t going to happen but part of that is the fabricated belief that Ukraine doesn’t need Main Battle Tanks as good as the Abrams keeps people from even asking why their countries aren’t providing tanks in the first place.

I promise you if you speak to Ukrainians who have direct experience with the use of Abrams tanks to accomplish what they are meant to accomplish while backed up by sufficient artillery… they will laugh in your face if you say the Abrams tank is not needed in Ukraine and is NOT possibly the most terrifying thing russians could see on the modern battlefield of Ukraine… The Abrams has to be understand as a tool that is reached for when a Bradley doesn’t smash the enemy in the face hard enough, which if you know anything about the Bradley’s performance in Ukraine should make you stop and think.

You don’t have to be a big fan of the US to recognize the Abrams was the best and most well rounded mass produced tank of the 20th century and for reasons that have only become more pronounced with the advent of fpv and top attack drones.

Keep this reality in mind and now turn around and look at the bulk of media coverage about Ukraine and witness the absurdity…