>

So we just run them on jet fuel for fun? Yes it'll run on diesel fine for a while, until the carbon deposits foul everything and causes overheating problems. If you don't want massive performance issues down the road you don't want to run it on diesel for too long.
ABRAMS TANKS IN WOODLAND GREEN LETS FUCKING GOOOOO >

Theyve been in a warehouse waiting for a moment like this >

Somewhere in a nondescript office at the National War College, a professor is dusting off classified wargame reports from the 1980s and thinking to himself, "finally". >

Ahhhh yes, the REFORGER battle plans. Many majors died making those things >

Springtime in Hohenfels. >

Oh god...the mud.
Saw an M1A1 there once (was LRS with 3rd ID at the time, would have been around 1988) that had the entire crew standing in the mud just staring at it (I think they were 3rd AD, but it's been a while).  We approached them and asked if they needed a hand.  They had thrown a track, to the inside...well, shit.  So we said we'd help them break track and get it fixed when the driver just laughed and told us we should look at the other side.  Yup, thrown track...to the inside.
Good luck fellla's, we gotta jet. >

Not being a tank enthusiast, I understood absolutely zero of that. ELI5? >

I'm not a tank enthusiast either but I assume that "throwing a track" means that the track came dislodged from the wheels (like a bike chain coming off the gears). Being thrown on the inside means it came off and ended up on the tank side of the wheels, which I assume is much more difficult to fix than if it were on the outside. The outside would mean that it would just be laying on the ground next to the tank. Inside means it's snagged and caught up in all the other moving parts and difficult to access and get a hold of in order to reseat it. Plus it's really heavy. >

My grandad was a quatermaster and used to put old tank treads in the back of his car - they weighed 80 pounds each. >

W… what was he training for? >


The Biden administration is leaning toward sending “a significant number” of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, two U.S. officials said, and an announcement could come as early as this week.
The development comes amid a public standoff with German officials, who are under pressure to send their own Leopard tanks and allow other European countries that operate the German-made vehicles to do so as well.
Last week, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told U.S. lawmakers that Germany would approve the transfer only if the U.S. donated its own tanks first.
The transfer of U.S. tanks would mark a major development in the West’s effort to arm Ukraine. Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have spent weeks pleading for tanks as Kyiv prepares for fresh Russian offensives in the country’s east.
One of the two U.S. officials said the Biden administration is considering sending 30-50 Abrams tanks.
The Pentagon never took tanks off the table, stressed a third U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of an announcement. But in recent weeks, U.S. officials have publicly cited the difficulties of providing the M1s, the Army’s main battle tank. They have said the Abrams made little operational sense for Ukraine at this moment because they guzzle jet fuel and require long supply lines to maintain.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, told reporters last week after a trip to Kyiv. “It may or may not be the right system.”
It’s unclear if the United States has struck a deal with Germany linking the transfer of both types of tanks. Poland, which also operates Leopards, officially asked Germany for authorization to transfer the German-made tank to Ukrainian forces on Tuesday.
The developments come after weeks of tense discussions between Washington, Berlin and their European allies. Since Scholz met with U.S. lawmakers last week, the German government has shifted its stance, at one point denying it had linked the transfers of the Abrams and Leopards.
A parade of Democrats and Republicans has pressured the Biden administration to grant Berlin’s request to send U.S. tanks first. “If the Germans continue to say we will only send or release Leopards on the condition that Americans send Abrams, we should send Abrams,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, told POLITICO a few hours before the Wall Street Journal first broke news of the decision on Tuesday. >

I really hope Germany was making those conditions to pressure the US into also giving Abrams tanks, not primarily to get out of giving/allowing the giving of Leopards. >

Germany just doesn't want to be singled out politically, but as the article says Abrams make no sense for us to send, the Leopard 2 at least is a V12 Internal Combustion engine, I'd bet the mechanics Ukraine has the have only worked Soviet made shit can more easily transfer their skills to that new engine type but expecting them to quickly learn how to operate and maintain turbine engines. Not to mention the need for Jet fuel complicates supply lines.
A great tank, for the US which is all about diminishing returns on investment for top notch stuff, but we have an entire military structure to back it up. We are sending Bradleys though which I bet will leave many Russian BMP's knocked out cold >


Not to mention the need for Jet fuel complicates supply lines.

I am pretty sure the Abrams can use almost any liquid hydrocarbon fuel (gas, diesel, jet, cooking oil, etc) iirc, so long as you have a lot of it.
The jet fuel concern is more of a political invention for why we shouldn't send them, not a real logistical concern.
But then again, I've never even seen an Abrams in person, so I am just another redditor talking out of my rear. >

Yea but the US only supplied it jet fuel according to some tankers and there has to be a reason for that, efficiency or engine degradation >

It was mostly logistics. The idea was to have everything… tanks, helicopters, HMMWVs all burning JP-5. Then you only have to haul around a single fuel. >

JP-8 is the single fuel for US Army and Air Force applications. JP-5 is common for applications such as shipboard use, but is not a US military common fuel. >

Well, shipboard is usually F44 for aviation, and F75 for marine propulsion. But I'm undoubtedly wrong about the army fuel. >

Exactly, JP-5 for shipboard aviation use. F44 is the NATO designation for JP-5. I’m not familiar with F75. >

F75 is marine propulsion fuel, what actually drives the ships. >

Dumb question: can't they haul the equipment in need for maintenance back to the border where they'll be received by western maintenance crews? >

On paper yes, but it wouldn't really be practical. They need regular maintenance, and consistently shipping back and forth would leave them off the battlefield more than on it compared to another tank that can be maintained where it is needed. It also opens the risk that if the means to transport them for maintenance is damaged/destroyed, they all could end up near useless being unable to be maintained then. >

Also it’s hella more expensive to ship it back and forth for maintenance. >

Expensive here means not just money it means:
Time out of service, labour, fuel, opportunity cost on logistics train, lead time for force build up between deployments that exposes them to intelligence analysis etc. >

Nobody thinks of the environment and nature in general when talking about war. I know that all of these are real problems, but also the the amounts of fuel burned, the trees destroyed, the fields burned, and the animals killed in explosions (Russian soldiers probably hurt them for fun too). 
It’s all just such a shame. >

Nature’s pretty good at springing back after disaster. Of course the disaster has to end first. >

That’s true but it’s like saying humanity will recover after nuclear war. Just because we left some of their habitat intact, that doesn’t mean we prevented their extinction. >

Everyone betting invest into some weapons manufacturers quick because the US and friends will be ready for a new upgrade after they send all their old stuff to Ukraine. >

US already has their next tank. It is an AI enabled, hybrid fueled tank. It can be remotedly operated and run completely silently for a time. Also has a massive advantage in fuel consumption, range, armor, ammo capacity over previous Abrams and has only 3 crew with plans to reduce that to 2. >

It's a little misleading to say we already have the next tank.  The Abrams X is a demonstrator, and the military will have to test it and decide what features they actually want - and whether they want the Abrams X at all.
I don't know anything about this - but the article you link to has quotes from the under secretary of the army indicating that they "don't know what the future tank will be".
But perhaps giving a bunch of this-gen tanks to Ukraine will push them to accelerate the timeline? >

Yes, like the KF-51 Panther, the AbX is just a company prototype. Even if the military likes it, there will probably be a bid time for other entries, as it could be the greatest tank ever made but way to costly as a system. Allowing other participants to bid their models can help correct any crazy high price tags.
They don't normally just select what's available. >

Like I have said from the beginning of the war, this war will be fought until either the Russians are driven out of every inch of pre-2014 Ukraine borders, or until the Ukrainians are driven out of every inch of territory east of the Dnipro River. There are no other conceivable borders where artillery shelling stops, and if shelling never stops, the war will continue.
NATO might as well go all-in at this point. >

I think you were right, but i don't think that is the case now, I believe that driving Ukrainians behind Dnipro would stop the war anymore. Russia would have to drive them to Poland border. >

First of all, no country is gonna let this stand.. the very thought of full annexation of a country is something no one will get behind in during these times. 
Which is simply why a good amount of nations are squeamish with recognizing taiwan as a bona fide country, no need to rip a painful band aid off without ever applying it
Imagine If ever russia ever announces that this was their final plan for Ukraine, this would be a greenlight for all Friendly or even neutral countries to intervene, might as well even start a world war honestly. With the way things have been going, it might be happening soon in the next few decades or even years >

What. That was 70 years ago >

One could argue that Hong Kong was recently “annexed”. The CCP effectively took over Hong Kong, freedoms curtailed, local government purged, any former sense of “democracy” destroyed - the One Country, Two Systems effectively dead and now just window dressing. >

Hong Kong is a pretty different situation because legally it was a portion of China that was in a lease to the UK, and the lease had ended. It was legally part of China, and while there was some international agreement signed about how it would be governed (that was broken by China's changes), it was realistically largely an internal politics matter of China. Not an invasion of a foreign country. >

This news made the Russian trolls really angry.  They're swarming this thread with fake concerns like "they use too much fuel" or "they're too expensive to maintain" or other bullshit.  Of course the US is going to provide Ukraine with EVERYTHING it needs to operate the tanks, not just the tanks.  It would be stupid to give Ukraine the tanks without the means to maintain them.  Obviously the US is going to provide that too.  Duh. >

Tbf it's not really a troll take, the logistics requiments are immense and it's also the government's official stance on why we haven't provided any up to this point. The US just had to ensure everything was lined up before they committed to anything publicly. 
On the other hand it's stupid comments like "it doesn't need jet fuel it can literally run on vegetable oil and vodka" that have me dumbfounded. Like, you're begging for Abrams and when you finally get your hands on some you're going to immediately trash them? Dumbest take I've seen here by far.  They absolutely require jet fuel to run optimally, anything less is for immediate emergencies in combat situations. >

A gas turbine will quite happily run on diesel with no modification.