Thread by @RALee85

Thread. It's good news that NATO members will provide modern tanks to Ukraine. Tanks remain a critical component in ground warfare, and Ukraine has the most experienced tank crews in the world. However, we should be realistic about what these deliveries mean.

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1618294094509531136

Ukraine's goal is to retake all of its territory occupied by Russia. Breaking through well-prepared defensive lines (and exploiting success) is difficult without significant combined arms advantages, and Ukraine is unlikely to have air superiority. 2/

Challenger 2, Leopard 2, and Abrams are more survivable and have better optics and fire control systems. That will give Ukrainian tankers an advantage in tank-on-tank fights and other engagements, and tank crews will be more likely to survive (and keep fighting). 3/

These new tanks also open up a new line of ammunition available to Ukraine, which is critical since they have been using tanks as artillery. Procuring 3 new types of tanks will be a logistical headache, but it will also give them more options for replacing future tank losses. 4/

Tanks will undoubtedly play a key role in Ukraine's future offensives as in Kharkiv and Kherson. The new tanks will increase Kyiv's chances for success but not guarantee it. They are just one component of combined arms, and can only partially compensate for other weaknesses. 5/

Personally, I think deliveries of new IFVs and APCs, like the Bradley and Stryker, are more significant than tanks because Ukraine lacks enough IFVs/APCs and the relative improvement of a Bradley/Stryker over BMP-1/MRAP is even greater than Leopard 2 over many Ukrainian tanks. 6/

The question is whether the decision by NATO to provide tanks signals that the alliance may be willing to consider other systems needed by Ukraine in the future. These tanks are also another step in the Ukrainian military being equipped with NATO weapons. 7/

So this is good news, but NATO tanks are not a silver bullet. If NATO's goal is to help Kyiv so that it can retake all of its territory, this will likely need to include other systems like fighters and ATACMS to improve Ukraine's combined arms capabilities even more. 8/

This is particularly true if continued attrition in Bakhmut and elsewhere along the front weakens Ukrainian units that will need to be available for offensives later this year. 9/