The US wants to deliver Abrams tanks in the fall

The US wants to deliver the already promised Abrams tanks to Ukraine in the fall. US Department of Defense spokesman Pat Ryder said in Washington today that the department has decided to supply Kiev with the M1A1 Abrams tank variant instead of the new M1A2 variant. This will allow the delivery time to be significantly reduced and the tanks to be sent to Ukraine by the fall, he said.

Asked what the timeline would have been otherwise, Ryder said the government initially did not commit to a timetable, expressing expectations that it could take more than a year to get the tanks to Ukraine.

A long back and forth

In late January, back and forth and in parallel with the German commitment to supply Panther tanks to Kiev, the US government announced the delivery of 31 M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine. However, Washington has already insisted that these will take “several months” to arrive in Ukraine. The US government had previously argued that it was not prudent to provide this main battle tank for various practical reasons. In the end, however, Washington surprisingly pivoted.

There are conflicting accounts from the White House and Berlin’s Chancellery about how the major battle tank pledge for Ukraine came about. The US president’s national security adviser, Jack Sullivan, said shortly before German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Washington in late February that Germany had made the supply of American tanks conditional on the promise of German Panther tanks. This was denied by the German government.