There is plenty of capacity on the combat vehicle side both tracked and wheeled ,” CEO Phebe Novakovic said on the company’s quarterly earnings call. General Dynamics executives said Wednesday that the Abrams production line can meet the demand of sending tanks to Ukraine. draws from those tanks in storage and remanufactures them for allies, such as Poland, which is buying upwards of 350 Abrams. has about 8,000 Abrams, but “significantly less” are battle-ready, he said. The overhauls produce “essentially a spanking brand-new tank for about half price,” Lockwood said.Ĭurrently, the U.S. These days, defense contractor General Dynamics remanufactures Abrams tank hulls for the U.S. With the Cold War over, thousands of Abrams that were built to fight the Soviet Union were put into storage, according to Dean Lockwood, a military vehicle analyst with Forecast International. has not built new Abrams tanks since the early 1990s. “I assume that that will be part of what's provided,” he said.īush said that policymakers will decide the timeline for sending the tanks to Ukraine and that “the Army will make whatever they want to happen, happen.” provides training and other related equipment with foreign arms deals so that the weapon remains effective. We have to be able to deliver the tanks, the support equipment, the training, the ammunition, the fuel, you know, the total package fielding like we do with other Abrams partners.”īush, a West Point graduate who was an Army armor officer, said the Abrams “has a significant logistics aspect to it.” Typically, the U.S. “I think there are multiple courses of action and it's not just the tanks. “The Army is developing options that will be presented to senior leaders,” Douglas Bush, the Army’s top acquisition official, said at a Pentagon briefing just hours after President Joe Biden announced the coming transfer of 31 tanks to Ukraine. Now that the White House has pledged to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the Army is working up various plans to help the Ukrainian military operate the maintenance-hungry and fuel-thirsty battlefield behemoths.

New future us army main battle tank