M1 Abrams tanks have jet engines
Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, has repeatedly emphasized that these tanks might not be the best fit for Ukraine’s military.
He and other military experts claim that using it would present challenges. And one of the problems is it runs on jet fuel.
In 2017, just before Trump took office, Obama sent a number of tanks to Poland. They were to protect against the potential of Russia invading. Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine took place in 2014.
Blinkin may remember the fiasco of transporting the tanks only to belatedly realize the fuel cost millions of dollars and some of those tanks were parked and never moved for years.
“I just don’t think we’re there yet,” Kahl said a week ago. “The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on, it has a jet engine.”
Biden’s decision to send the tanks was a big reversal for the US top brass. And it could take up to a year to manufacture and send them.
The decision to send the powerful tanks came after over a month of frustrated and stalled negotiations with Germany. Senior defense officials described it as the “product of good diplomatic conversations.”
Tank delays
According to a New York Post report, it could take up to a year for the artillery to arrive on the battlefield.
