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Russian troops are definitely poorly prepared. Likely Saddam's troops were in a better shape in 1991, when the same tanks clashed in Kuwait: Abramses and Chieft
by nine_k 2y ago
Russian troops are definitely poorly prepared. Likely Saddam's troops were in a better shape in 1991, when the same tanks clashed in Kuwait: Abramses and Chieftains vs T-72s and T-80s. Then the Western tanks showed an overwhelming advantage. Now about a quarter of Abrams tanks in Ukraine were rendered inoperable, some of them plainly destroyed. Tanks did become more vulnerable to anti-tank weapons.
- vasac 2y agoThere were no T-80s in Iraq or Kuwait.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoIn fairness, the Abrams in the Ukraine are ancient export-version M1A1s. The current US standard is A2v4. Other than basic shape, the technology is completely different and several decades apart, the armor bears almost no relation. A lot of the old export Abrams had armor similar to the Israeli Merkava tanks, it didn’t have a lot of similarity to what the US used. Something that gets lost in these discussions is that the US does continuous “Ship of Theseus” upgrades to their systems and they mostly don’t export the state-of-the-art. Abrams armor in US systems is regularly completely replaced with new tech but the details are classified and not exported.