After Two Years Of War, Ukraine Still Has A Thousand Tanks (2024)

The 31 M-1 Abrams tanks the United States pledged to the Ukrainian war effort arrived in Ukraine back in the fall.

At least four months later, the 68-ton tanks—with their 120-millimeter smoothbore guns, high-end day-night optics, composite armor and powerful but thirsty gas-turbine engines—still are somewhere behind the front line.

We don’t know when Ukrainian commanders plan to commit the 2000s-vintage, four-person M-1A1SAs to combat. We don’t even know which brigade they belong to.

What we do know is that, two years into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Ukrainian forces have as many active tanks as they had before Russia attacked in February 2022: around a thousand.

And it’s largely because of foreign donations of tanks such as the M-1s. “Overall, we estimate that two years after the full-scale invasion, the number of [main battle tanks] in service in the Ukrainian armed forces remains near pre-war levels,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London reported.

But there’s a catch. The Ukrainian ground forces have doubled in size since 2022. Today there are roughly a hundred army, air-assault, marine, territorial and national guard brigades, each with at least 2,000 people and scores of vehicles.

So while Ukraine has managed at least to maintain its overall tank inventory even after losing around 700 tanks in combat, according to Oryx, its tank needs are much greater today than they were in 2022.

If every brigade had a single battalion with 31 tanks, Ukraine would need more than 3,000 tanks.

It doesn’t have 3,000 tanks. Subtracting 700 losses from a pre-war strength of 1,000 then adding 500 tanks the Ukrainians captured from the Russians, several hundred ex-Soviet tanks Ukrainian technicians recovered from long-term storage and another 600 tanks Ukraine so far has received from its allies results in a current inventory of maybe 2,000 tanks.

Cut that number in half to take into account the heavy volume of tanks passing through rear-area workshops for repairs and upgrade and you arrive at the same number IISS arrived at. A thousand tanks.

But that’s enough for 30 front-line battalions or slightly fewer than a hundred front-line companies. Equipping every Ukrainian brigade with tanks means equipping most of them with at best a company.

All that is to say, according to IISS, “Ukrainian efforts to field additional combat elements have outpaced equipment supply, leaving some units lacking equipment to be even close to full strength.”

As Russia’s wider war grinds into its third year, Ukraine is going to need more tanks. And given that Ukrainian industry still isn’t producing new tanks, it’s going to have to get them from its allies.

Just not the United States. The Americans haven’t donated any new vehicles in nearly two months. Not since Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress began blocking a bill authorizing $60 billion in fresh aid to Ukraine.

Those 31 M-1s, lingering somewhere behind the front line, might be the only M-1s Ukraine ever gets.