Was bound to happen. Hopefully the crew made it out alright.
The Abrams was never designed to be immortal, the Abrams was designed for the crew to have maximum survivability.
Huh, TIL! Maybe I should cancel my order on wish.
Damn weren’t these like just recently fielded? I saw a video of one the other day. Think opsec on these need to be hyper tight because the loss of them is really really bad for political optics sadly.
Of course that sucks because one of the primary reasons Ukraine wants M1s is because they have an insanely high survivability rate for an MBT. If the crew survived you’re seeing these worked as intended. Can probably be salvaged too.
They’ve been operating near Avdiivka for over a month, according to the 47th Mechanized. It’s more surprising this is the first loss we’ve seen.
There was obviously a penetration but from what we can see in this picture the crew probably walked away and this Abrams can likely be recovered, repaired, and rejoin the fight.
There’s smoke coming from the hatches of the crew compartment indicating a fire inside the tank, not just the ammo storage.
Perhaps the crew set it on fire just before evacuating
We don’t really know what happened.
For all we know, it could have gotten stuck in the mud, which is still quite deep and wet now. And the Abrams is famously heavy.
If that happens in the wrong place, the AFU themselves have to scuttle the tank to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
