Tanks are the big issue. Who would have predicted?

Nato has between them nearly 15,000 battle tanks but only recently have members of the alliance seriously contemplated sending any of them to Ukraine. Until now, for practical as well as political reasons, the focus has been on providing Soviet-made T-72 tanks held by former members of the Warsaw Pact who joined Nato after the end of the Cold War. Nato officials said it was sensible to send T-72s early on in the war because Ukraine had its own stock of similar Soviet-era tanks and knew how to operate them. However, as the war progressed it became clear that more advanced western tanks were required to outpace and outgun the tanks deployed by the Russian invasion force. Such tanks have been at the top of President Zelensky’s shopping list, as well as advanced air-defence systems and longer-range rocket launchers. The priority now being given to tanks serves as an ironic lesson to the West. With the switch in resources to the Indo-Pacific to meet the perceived increasing security threat from China, the tank role has been re-examined. The UK considered at one point giving up tanks altogether to prioritise on other weapon systems such as armed drones and long-range missiles. The US Marine Corps has already handed over all its Abrams M1 tanks to the army as part of a redesign of its future warfighting requirements. However, the war in Ukraine has reminded Nato that tanks still have a vital place on the battlefield. The UK was the first Nato member to offer its most advanced (though now nearly 30 years old) Challenger 2 tank. Zelensky wants the German Leopard 2 because it is rated as one of the best tanks in the world and has seen service in Afghanistan, Syria and Kosovo. The biggest tank owner in Nato is the US with more than 6,600 in warehouse storage in Europe – Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Poland – at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait for Middle East operations, in Japan and South Korea for Indo-Pacific missions, and at the US army depot in Sierra, California. There are also tanks on prepositioned ships in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Turkey has more than 3,000, Greece, nearly 1,250, France, about 400, Poland, around 860, Germany, 266, the UK, 227 and Italy, 200. Although the US has almost more tanks than the rest of Nato combined, the Pentagon has been reluctant to offer Ukraine the army’s Abrams M1A2 or the older M1A1 tank which was used by the Marine Corps before the decision to scrap tank units. However, Pentagon officials have said the reasons are not political but purely logistical. Unlike the T-72s already in use in Ukraine and the German Leopard 2s and British Challenger 2s, all of which run on diesel, Abrams tanks are powered by gas turbines and require experienced maintenance teams to ensure constant serviceability. In combat only nine Abrams tanks have been destroyed, seven of them by friendly-fire incidents and two to prevent capture during the Iraq war.