I caught something about the maintenance issue the other day. Apparently the Abrams is built on unitized modules. So if something breaks, you don’t replace the part. You replace the entire section, and it goes somewhere else to be rebuilt.
It’s meant to make field repair simpler. But that means it’s really bad for sending as aid. It means very limited availability of individual parts, and it would take too long for Ukraine to get that “somewhere else” up and running. So you’d be talking sending shit back to US forces to be rebuilt, and probably have a shortage of modules to swap in.
A lot of US military equipment seems to operate that way these days. My dad spent some time in Iraq commanding the logistics for mid-air refueling and combat search and rescue units. Most of his time was spent just finding enough engines to swap onto aircraft to keep them in the air while existing engines were down. Mechanics on the flightline didn’t have the tools, parts, etc to just get them running again. And turn around from the places that did wasn’t enough to keep planes and helicopters in the air.
So more engines.
This is apparently not the approach with the other options. Particularly the Leopards which were built with export, and thus less intense logistics in mind.
