Summary and Key Points: The M1 Abrams tank faced unexpected challenges in Ukraine, suffering losses from drone attacks and maintenance issues.
-Despite vulnerabilities, including top-down drone strikes, tanks remain crucial when combined with advanced reconnaissance, networking, and ISR technologies.
-Lessons from Ukraine highlight that traditional combined-arms maneuver, enhanced with modern tech like AI and autonomous drones, greatly boosts tank effectiveness.
-Abrams tanks helped achieve strategic gains by exploiting weaker enemy defenses during Ukraine’s Kursk offensive.
Why M1 Abrams Tanks Struggled in Ukraine But Remain Vital to Warfare
Rather than signaling obsolescence, the war underscores the need for tactical upgrades, new operational concepts, and hybrid tactics, reinforcing tanks as indispensable components in modern warfare when properly integrated with advanced technology.
Many heralded the introduction of Abrams tanks into the war in Ukraine as a potential turning point in the war. Yet, like many tanks on both sides of the current war, the platform has been heavily damaged by enemy drones and has achieved limited success. The M1 Abrams tanks have also had maintenance problems in Ukraine, further compounding problems associated with their performance.
However, the issue of tanks in Ukraine is more ambiguous than it may appear at first glance, as they have arguably been instrumental in enabling Ukrainian forces to accomplish some of their gains in the war.
The Kyiv Post newspaper published an article in 2024 that stated that Abrams tanks were vulnerable to top-down attacks, much like Russian tanks have been throughout the war. The essay further explains that Abrams tanks have also proven vulnerable to top-down aerial attacks from drones.
Does this mean tanks themselves are becoming obsolete? Or, instead, does it suggest that new upgrades and concepts of operation need integration into approaches to tank warfare to adapt to a changing warfare environment?
Countless media reports emphasize this well-known vulnerability of tanks, which has, in part, helped generate new concepts of operation. The US Marine Corps Force Design 2030, which cites lessons learned from the Ukraine war, calls for a massive reduction in the service’s force of tanks.
The Corps subsequently decided to divest its force of tanks in favor of a lighter, faster, and more expeditionary lethal force using an increased number of drones and anti-armor weapons for high-speed multi-domain attacks.
However, the circumstances are quite different for the Army, which has consistently upgraded its fleet of Abrams tanks and made tactical adjustments to ensure their continued relevance.
There do appear to be key variables that many reports about tank destruction in Ukraine seem to miss to a certain extent.
There are many reasons why the tank is here to stay, particularly if upgraded. Modern applications of what could be identified as traditional combined arms Maneuvers using heavier platforms such as tanks continue to show great combat effectiveness, particularly when paired with reconnaissance and targeting units, advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and a new generation of networking and command and control technology.
New Combined Arms Maneuver
Mechanized assault, aligned with the Army Wide Area Maneuver concept of operation, not only continues to occupy a key place in modern warfare but will arguably take on even more tactical relevance in coming years as emerging technologies in the areas of unmanned systems, AI-enabled computing, sensor image fidelity, target-data transmission contribute to more survivable attack formations and the successful application of longer-range precision weaponry.
Army Research Laboratory scientists, for example, talked to me a few years ago about breakthrough progress with AI-empowered technology able to autonomously land a drone on a moving tank using advanced sensing and machine learning.
What this amounts to is that emerging technologies and tactics continue to make the tank more effective and indispensable in a modern land war.
Recently, tanks and heavier armored vehicles were instrumental in generating the initial success of Ukraine’s Kursk offensive by using forward reconnaissance units likely in position to identify weak points in the Russian perimeter.
With the effective employment of ISR and throughout much of the region along the border areas of operating Russian troops, there continue to be highly lethal layered defenses, mines, barbed wire, and ditches, making it difficult for tanks to break through or even operate.
This is especially true given the widespread use of attack drones and anti-armor weapons, which have had a devastating impact on heavy armor in the Ukraine-Russia war.
However, when combined with advanced reconnaissance, networking, and improved command and control, tanks seem to have proven to be uniquely valuable in Ukraine’s Kursk offensive.
An essay from the BBC cited sources indicating that Britain’s Challenger 2 tank was successfully employed during the Kursk offensive, and it appears maneuvering tanks were likely able to use ISR to find weaker, more penetrable parts of Russia’s defenses.
This enabled Ukrainian armored units to use surprise and attack areas less fortified by barbed wire, attack drone swarms, anti-armor weapons, and mines.
New Tank Technologies for M1 Abrams?
This demonstrates that the firepower and pure mechanized attack force of a modern upgraded main battle tank can perform critical, unique, much-needed functions if appropriately used in a modern threat environment.
Command and control likely enabled mechanized units to blast and maneuver through Russian defenses. In this respect, massively upgraded traditional tank platforms can use modern technologies, upgraded sensing, and longer-range weapons to adapt tactics and remain highly effective in a modern threat environment.
Indeed, the Abrams’s heavier weight can restrict mobility, and the effective use of anti-armor weapons is changing tactics and concepts of operation for how best to employ tanks in combat; there is a distinct combat value offered by tanks that is nearly impossible to replicate.
The US Army understands this, which is why it is developing lighter-weight and unmanned armored attack vehicles while also deploying upgraded M1 Abrams tanks.
The prevailing US Army consensus seems to be that both approaches are greatly needed and can be greatly optimized by reinforcing and utilizing one another.
About the Author: Kris Osborn
Kris Osborn is the Military Technology Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
