War has come to Europe. And, like many people, I’ve been following along. One thing that seems to be a big topic of discussion on the small list of people for whom I trust on these things, is tanks. Specifically, who should send tanks to Ukraine.
The situation, as I understand, goes something like this. (If you’re hip to the tank argument, feel free to skip this and jump below to the next section:
Ukraine needs tanks to do an offensive soon. Lots of them. They have old-ish Soviet-era tanks, which is nice. They’re relatively easy to maintain and they already have the expertise in how to run and repair them. Problem is, they’re running out of parts and ammo for those tanks, as well as the tanks themselves. Also remember, these tanks are like 30-50 years old by now.
So, Ukraine needs lots of modern tanks. There are only a few contenders of type of tank — because tanks are so annoying to fix and each is pretty different. You want many copies of the same kind of tank, not a zoo of a few copies of different types — that’s a logistical nightmare.
The only tanks that fit the bill are the M1 Abrams (controlled by US) and the Leopard (controlled by Germany). I say controlled because though friendlier-to-Ukraine countries (like Poland) own Leopards, they are contractually obligated to ask Germany before transferring them to anyone, e.g. Ukraine.
Germany doesn’t want to send Leopards, on the grounds of … well, they keep changing their story, but the general public reason they give seems to be something about how they want US to send tanks instead, or at least at the same time. This is quite frustrating to observers.
The American argument, however, is … hilarious?
As far as I can tell, the official position of the US army goes something like this:
Dear heavens! You’re not actually supposed to USE our tanks. They’re much too fragile and finicky to be actually useful. They’re wasteful gas guzzlers. They take forever to train on. They are delicate flowers that require pristine conditions and fully stocked repair shops to work.
They aren’t meant to be used for something as horrid as an actual war. Much less one where you might be losing territory, or have unstable supply lines. No, no, our tanks are much too useless to be helpful for Ukraine. Better for Germany to send their tanks, those tanks are much more rugged, easy to use, easier to repair, just all around better.
And this, uh, seems like a weird argument to make? The best army in the world doesn’t really think its tanks are very useful?
If you think I’m exaggerating too much, here are a couple screenshots from this good piece by Michael Weiss and James Rushton:
Beautiful. FWIW, this is probably related to how the US has entrenched, terrible monopolies in military procurement.
Anyway, maybe the Korean K2 will save us. It’s just all so darkly comic / tragic.