MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. US Abrams tanks have not evolved during the special operation in Ukraine and are now an easy target for FPV drones, Dmitry Kuzyakin, the CEO of the Center for Complex Uncrewed Solutions (CCUS), has told TASS.
"Russia is moving in the right direction as it changes the tactics of using tanks and enhancing their defense capabilities. For the Abrams to start changing it would take the Americans to come to use them in combat. The Ukrainians are proxies. There is no feedback to the manufacturers. The way I see it, the manufacturers in the US don't care about the Ukrainians, either. Naturally, as long as there is a lack of direct communication between those who make the tanks and who use them, the Abrams will not evolve to meet modern warfare requirements. Using these tanks further on means letting us destroy them. The sensible solution is to roll the vehicles back to safety and keep them there. Although I don't know if it makes sense at all. The Ukrainians can just easily put the Abrams tanks in their museums," Kuzyakin believes.
Earlier, Verkhovna Rada member Maxim Buzhansky confirmed that the Ukrainian military had withdrawn 31 American tanks because of their vulnerability to Russian drones and to new tactics on the frontline. As Kuzyakin said, when it comes to FPV-drones, all modern tanks are equally vulnerable to these weapons.
"It makes no difference whether it is a T-80, T-90, Abrams, Leopard or any other tank. The latest generation tanks are all similar, just like fighter jets or any other vehicles. Roughly speaking, they were made for the wars of yesterday. Faced with fixed wing or multirotor FPV, they all have the same problem. Tanks begin to be hit from certain angles that their designers and engineers had not anticipated. FPV drones’ operators can choose the point to hit: the roof or the ring of the tank’s turret, or some other spot," Kuzyakin explained.
He added that on the modern battlefield the tank was often a sitting duck for attack drones.
"If you keep using them the old way: ‘I don't care, I'm as safe as in a tank’ (a subtle allusion to the saying ‘as safe as the bank’), you won't last long. The usage of armored vehicles and the tanks themselves have evolved a lot. Abrams has not," he said.