Republic of China Army Activates First U.S.-Supplied Abrams Tank Battalion: Are They Already...

That tends to make our cooperation in other ways (like science) seem quite unusual!

LTC Matthew Schlosser Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you thought the Abrams was obsolete. In essence, the obsolescence will not take effect until 2040: An Army Science Board report concluded that the Abrams will not be dominant on the 2040 battlefield, especially against peer adversaries like China and Russia. I don't feel it is a dominate force on today's battlefield. Mainly because it is not very good against evolving threats. The current Abrams design is seen as vulnerable to modern threats like drones, top-attack munitions, and precision artillery. Also it's weight is a liability, making it less mobile and straining transport and infrastructure.

LTC Matthew Schlosser Ukraine has experienced heavy losses of its U.S.-supplied Abrams tanks, with some reports indicating that most of the first batch have been destroyed. The operational lifespan of an Abrams tank in Ukraine is limited by its vulnerability on the battlefield. Sources like Defence Security Asia note that using them on the front lines can lead to short-lived performance. However, the M1A1 tanks initially supplied to Ukraine are older variants that lack the depleted uranium armor and advanced capabilities of newer M1A2 models, making them more susceptible to being defeated by anti-tank weapons.

1SG(P) Dean Mcbride (MPER) (SPHR) - Equipment does not equal capability, people do. Poland has had F-16s for nearly 20 years, and they're no more capable with them than they were with their MiGs. That's a HUGE blind spot in the Pentagon, they see friendly forces with American equipment as interchangeable with American forces. They are not! We can learn from Ukraine's failures with American equipment, but their failure does not predict our own.

Like you said, we don't export our best stuff. Even the M1A2Ts that we gave Taiwan won't have the same armor that an American Abrams does. The point is not that the Abrams is bad, it's that tanks aren't what Taiwan needs in the first place.

As for "modern threats," top attack ATGMs have been around for 37 years, and yet tanks have done just fine in Iraq, twice, since then. We're still building new aircraft carriers in spite of the DF-21D missile. There's a place for systems that are the right tool for 99% of jobs in spite of the other 1%. Tanks are no more or less vulnerable to drones than any other system, and the CUAS systems that we develop in general will work just as well to protect tanks as they do everything else.

I'm just a dumb fly boy, but what I'm hearing is that the Type 100 tank functions as a battlefield coordinator on land the same way as our F-35 serves that function in the air. Pretty smart for a country planning on massive land battles.