Military columnist David Axe, in his column for The Telegraph, raises an important question about the 59 Abrams tanks stored in Australian army warehouses. These combat vehicles could significantly strengthen the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the ongoing war, but their transfer is being delayed due to political fears that have no logical basis.
Australia has old tanks that it no longer uses. Ukraine wants to get them.
So what's stopping Canberra from sending these 59 surplus M-1 Abrams to Kyiv?
Politics, of course. But if the Australians can muster the will to donate their M-1s, and the Americans can find the strength to approve the deal, it is obvious what the Ukrainians will do with them - strengthen the group of 31 surviving former American M-1s transferred to Ukraine last year.
The rapidly expanding Australian Army acquired its M-1A1s in 2004 to replace aging German-made tanks. In July of this year, it retired the M-1A1s without ever seeing them in combat, and began replacing them with newer American-made M-1A2s.
The old M-1A1s are in storage. Ukrainian officials have been interested in them since at least February. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the government in Canberra has increasingly expressed a willingness to hand them over.
“The government is reviewing the request and working with the US to make the transfer possible,” the newspaper reported last week.
Many things could go wrong. Senior Australian officials could veto the transfer out of fear of escalating tensions between Australia and Russia. The United States has an export license for the tanks and could reject the proposed transfer for the same reasons. Much less likely, but also likely, is that Ukrainian officials could inspect the tanks, which are decades old, and politely decline the transfer.
The most likely obstacles are political factors in Canberra and Washington, but there could also be some minor logistical issues. While the Australian and Ukrainian M-1 tanks share the same basic model—the 67-ton, four-man export version of the M-1A1 Situational Awareness with tungsten and steel armor, digital fire control, and a 120mm smoothbore main gun—the Australian and former American tanks have slightly different equipment that the Ukrainians will have to deal with. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have also developed additional armor kits for their M-1s and will likely want to install them on any additional Abrams.
If all goes well for the Ukrainians and they receive these 59 tanks, they will almost certainly send many of them to the Ukrainian Army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade. The 47th Brigade is the primary operator of American-made armored vehicles — and the sole operator of Ukrainian M-1s.
The 47th Brigade is a powerful unit. That’s why the Ukrainian General Staff kept it in combat non-stop for 15 months—a long time for any formation. When Ukrainian forces launched their ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful counteroffensive in southern Ukraine in June 2023, the 47th Brigade was in the vanguard—and suffered heavy losses, bogged down in dense minefields.
