The U.S. Army has dedicated to bettering the survivability of its M1 Abrams predominant battle tanks with the allocation of over $107 million in funding for brand new automobile safety methods. The funds are supposed to cowl growth and operationalisation of stealth-enhancing coatings, passive armour kits, and new laser warning receivers. GM1912 VPS Signature Administration paint is meant to be utilized to over 380 autos, and was designed to scale back the chance of thermal detection as “a part of the Army’s Concealment, Deception, and Obscuration layered survivability method,” in keeping with the most recent Procurement of Weapons and Tracked Fight Automobiles report. The majority of funding, nonetheless, has been allotted to the GM1914 VPS High Assault Safety passive armour kits, which have been designed to strengthen automobile compartments and hatches towards threats from prime assaults by guided missiles, drones or loitering munitions. Enough kits are being procured to outfit 4 Armoured Brigade Fight Groups, or roughly 350 tanks, with the funds allotted amounting to $91.7 million.
Vital issues concerning the Abrams tank’s survivability have arisen because the autos started to be deployed for fight by the Ukrainian Army in February 2024, with its vulnerability towards new threats from prime assault weapons having been notably broadly criticised. Though the Ukrainian Army acquired downgraded M1A1 variants which can be much less nicely protected, primarily because of their lack of depleted uranium armour, nearly all of the Abrams tanks filmed being neutralised have been hit by guided artillery or by single use ‘kamikaze’ drones, which strike from the highest the place the armour thickness of Ukrainian and U.S. Army variants are the identical. Thus whereas U.S. Army variants are anticipated to be much less weak to frontal penetration, just like the one confirmed kill from by the 125mm gunof a Russian T-72B3 tank, within the massive majority of engagements they’d haven’t been extra survivable. That is more likely to have been a big issue stimulating the brand new investments in bettering armour safety ranges with a deal with top-attack weapons. The Ukrainian Army has itself made important efforts to enhance the armour safety ranges of its Abrams tanks by commissioning the mixing of explosive reactive armour after the autos first suffered heavy losses, though this doesn’t seem to have considerably affected attrition charges.
The U.S. Army at the moment deploys an estimated 2,640 Abrams tanks, of which roughly 1,500 have been introduced as much as the M1A2 SEPv2 customary, and roughly 600 extra to the most recent M1A2 SEPv3 customary. The remaining roughly 540 tanks, and the roughly 2000 extra being held in storage, are outdated Chilly Conflict period M1A1s. The Abrams is the one tank class within the U.S. Army, and has lately been delivered to the Republic of China Army, the Australian Army, and the Polish Army. Though the Abrams beforehand suffered important losses to calmly armed paramilitaries when deployed each by the Iraqi Army and by the Saudi Army within the 2010s, the size of the losses confronted by the Ukrainian Army in far more intensive engagements has been broadly assessed by analysts to have tarnished its fame.
By late August 2024 losses have been estimated at shut to 2 third of the Ukrainian fleet at 20 of the 31 tanks, and by early June 2025 the Ukrainian Army was assessed to have misplaced 87 p.c of the American sourced tanks with 27 of the 31 autos destroyed or captured. Loss charges could have been considerably increased had the Russian Army fielded guided prime assault anti-tank missiles, that are broadly fielded by different potential adversaries corresponding to China and North Korea. The Russian Army operationalised its first missile of the sort, the Bulsae-4, after procuring it from North Korea in 2024. Whereas the Abrams has suffered excessive losses, the Russian Army’s personal T-72, T-80 and T-90 tanks have additionally taken important losses to drones and prime assault weapons, as have German Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks, with tank industries internationally in search of to quickly reply to the event of recent anti-armour applied sciences.
