Ukraine faces the challenge of bringing tanks to the front

Weeks of political wrangling between Western allies over whether to arm Ukraine with advanced tanks appear to be on the verge of resolution:

the Biden administration is expected to announce Wednesday that it will send tanks M1 Abrams and for Germany to say it will soon decide whether to deploy its tanks Leopard 2.

These moves are likely to cause several European countries to send Leopard 2s from their own stocks, greatly increasing the potential number of tanks for Ukraine.

But once the diplomatic wrangling is over, the hard part begins:

Bring heavy armor and more tanks to the battlefield as Russia prepares for a new offensive scheduled for spring or sooner.

US officials said Abrams tanks could do it take years to reach the Ukrainian battlefields.

The process of delivering Western weapons and other military equipment to Ukraine was one of the most important best kept secrets from the war.

Concerns about the possibility of Russia attacking frontline roads, railways or material haulage staging points in eastern and southern Ukraine have resulted in what officials and experts describe as stealthy convoysusually hidden in the dark or camouflaged, to evade attacks.

Russia is not known to have succeeded in attacking a large Western arms convoy sent to Ukraine.

Experts have described the process of transporting the massive munitions and vehicles to the conflict zone as a cat and mouse game that Ukraine won.

Enigma

“No one knows, in public, how this is happening,” said Heinrich Brauss, a former NATO deputy secretary general who now works at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

“I’m not even sure the capitals know this in detail. But they succeed.”

The risks – and concerns of provoking Russia – are so great that Ukrainian troops must retrieve weapons from stockpiles on NATO territory, rather than have them delivered to the conflict zone by Western forces or contractors.

“The moment when armor is rolling through Ukraine would be a perfect moment for something on a large scale,” said Nikolai Sokov, an expert at the Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in Vienna and a former Russian diplomat, referring to the possibility of an attack from Moscow.

A Russian attack on a weapons convoy, he said, “would not only delay future deliveries, but also eliminate at least a considerable proportion of modern armor before it reaches the front line.”

A Pentagon spokesman declined last week to discuss efforts to deliver the more than 27,000 million dollars in weapons and the security aid the Biden administration has already pledged to Ukraine, the most since the war began last February.

However, former Western officials and military experts have outlined a patchwork of delivery routes, largely from centers in Poland, Slovakia and Germany, that will be crucial in bringing tanks, armored fighting vehicles and huge guns to the front lines.

Most of the weapons will be transported in rail cars or flatbed trucks strong enough to withstand them huge weight.

According to experts, the railway is often the fastest and safest way to transport armored vehicles, as long convoys of flatbed trucks are likely to attract Attention Russian.

Getting tanks and other armored vehicles to the battlefield would take too much time, fuel and spare parts, experts say.

They would also, in essence, become a Moving target for Russian warplanes.

The general Robert B. Abrams, A former US Army four-star general set to retire in 2021 with decades of experience with the tank named after his late father, he has echoed the concerns of some Pentagon leaders who think he wouldto difficult to Ukrainian troops to repair and maintain a fleet of fuel-intensive tanks.

And that after taking them there.

“The time it would take to get there, to stockpile the supplies, to deliver the equipment, to train the crews, to train the mechanics, to collect everything, how long would that take?” Abrams said in an interview.

“I don’t know, but I assure you it won’t be 30 days”.

The impact the Abrams and its 120mm gun would have on inferior Russian tanks, however, was not in doubt, he said.

“It’s going to tear them apart,” Abrams said.

“He’ll put a hole in anything.”

c.2023 The New York Times Society