When the first batch of M1A1 Abrams tanks to make it to Ukraine in gratitude to America came off the assembly line, there was hope. These giants, once billboards for warfare superiority during NATO training exercises and previous Middle Eastern conflicts, were guaranteed to place the war in Kyiv’s back pocket. But so far, it’s been colder than ice. On Ukraine’s war frontlines, the Abrams has lost humongous numbers, chronic mechanical failures, and a drastic drop in reputation on the east’s drone-infested frontlines.
Their coming had been premature. At the first days of February 23, 2024, Abrams had reached the front, but within days of their arrival, their destruction was heard. In Berdychi, a tank blew up on a mine and was abandoned before it was killed by a Russian one-way strike drone. It just would not stop. Some Abrams were killed by precise artillery rounds, some by cannon rounds at point-blank range from another tank, and some were annihilated by the swarm of affordable but deadly FPV kamikaze drones Russia employed.
Attrition has been abysmal. Of 31 tanks delivered, over 20 were reported destroyed, disabled, or captured within a few months. The losses were mounting rapidly between late February and mid-April 2024, as Ukrainian crews withdrew available tanks for hurriedly executed refits. The speed at which Abrams has been devoured has cast black doubts on its being suited to this type of war.
Technical issues are not being team players. Ukrainian commanders are also being afflicted with frequent malfunctioning of Abrams’ electronics, and condensation in the damp Ukrainian climate. Rain and fog jam fire-control and navigation gear, sometimes isolating tanks from command. Because the Abrams uses sophisticated electronics to communicate and fire, its performance has been spotty on an electronically noisy battlefield.
Its strongest foe, however, has been from the skies. Russian FPV drones have repeatedly exploited vulnerabilities that heavy frontal armor cannot defend against. Its variant supplied to Ukraine is less advanced than later Abrams versions and does not include the new Chobham composite armor, and is thus more exposed.
Crews have improvised temporary fixes—bolt-on jury-rigged plates, even some Soviet Kontakt-1 exploding armor—but these have served only to offer temporary protection from salvoes of cheap, precision drones.
The Abrams design concept has also collided with the Ukraine war. The Abrams tank was intended for NATO-style combined arms combat, where artillery, air, and infantry all play together in lovely conspiracy. Ukraine too often can’t afford such frippery. Its oversized and lavish Abrams army is the first prize of any would-be aggressor. It’s compared to smaller T-64s and T-80s that Ukrainians still employ. The Abrams is shot at beforehand to scare it. Russian T-72B3s have even occasionally eliminated them—something that would never have been possible in the previous decades.
Ukrainian commanders, interviewed by Western journalists, were disgruntled. They believe the Abrams is too fragile for today’s battlefield—laptops that malfunction, armor that’s too vulnerable to drones, and how large it is a drawback. There has been some field testing, but nothing has addressed the fundamental issue: the Abrams was never designed for this kind of battle.
Russian troops, though, have moved with breakneck velocity. The use of FPV drones by artillery and infantry has turned the battlefield into a force to be contended with by any heavy weapons, including America’s. Captured Abrams have been employed furthering Moscow’s mission towards the pointlessness of Western weaponry.
To strategists, Abrams’ activity in Ukraine is more than a freeze frame of one tank. It is a demonstration of how the war is re-fashioning itself in today’s world, where mini-drones, jamming, and being able to change direction quickly overwhelm even the best technologically equipped weapon. The Abram, once unstoppable, le is brought low by lesser and lower-level foes.
The moral of the lesson is obvious: the tank era is over. The Abrams’s final interface with the Ukrainians illustrates how the battlefield is being reshaped and how the future generation of armored fighting vehicles—and the doctrine that goes with them—will be forced to change. Steel and rifle remain essential, but survival now comes more and more to depend on how quickly one can respond to drones, to cyber warfare, to the endemic tension of an adversary who will simply learn and evolve forever.