Sending 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine not only will not ensure that Ukraine wins its war against Russia, but also could start a nuclear war, an Army veteran says.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis told Breitbart News that Ukraine does not and will not have the expertise to integrate the tanks into its war fighting. But the tanks will do one thing — infuriate Russia. And that could invite an attack that sane military planners have wanted to avoid since World War II.
Davis said the Biden administration, which has already sent almost $70 billion to Ukraine, has not explained what its goal is, or what it hopes to accomplish by poking the Russian hornet’s nest.
As a practical matter, though, the United States is at war with Russia. The money and military supplies Biden has provided to Ukraine is an act of war.
Tanks Won’t Mean Ukraine Defeats Russia
A longtime tanker in the U.S. Army, Davis is unequivocal. “I can tell you that just having NATO tanks does not equal battlefield success,” he explained. They won’t be too effective because Ukraine doesn’t possess the strategic and tactical expertise to integrate them into a winning battle plan.
“The problem is that what works on video games and on paper — you have to make it work on the ground,” he said. “And very few people anywhere in the western media or anywhere in the other media, for that matter, understand how combat power is made.”
Successfully using the tanks is not merely a matter of training personnel to operate them. It also demands a fully trained force across and up and down the ranks in platoons, companies, battalions, and brigades.
“You can’t send 500 [Ukrainian] dudes to Germany and conduct six weeks of maneuver training and think you’re going to get the same output, because those guys don’t have the experience,” Davis said. “They don’t even have the baseline understanding that we had a whole career and our whole training before we even arrived at that one year preparation.”
The idea that such a plan will work is “ridiculous,” he said. “What makes somebody think that just the presence of a different kind of tank is suddenly going to change all that?”
One reason Davis knows the tanks won’t do much good: Ukraine has 1,000 now, and the United States and other countries have already flooded the country with advanced weaponry, including 8,600 Javelin missile systems, 178 155mm and 105mm Howitzers, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers, 1,000 Humvees, 20 Mi-17 helicopters, and much, much more.
Darkly amusing is this fact: “I’ve been scouring the internet and any report I could find for months, and there’s hardly any tank-on-tank engagements,” Davis told Breitbart:
Highlighting how Ukraine “in a year of fighting, has never pushed Russia back [from the Donbas area],” Davis [asked], “What makes somebody think that just the presence of a different kind of tank is suddenly going to change all that?”
Another problem is Ukraine’s lack of experience in maneuver warfare. Though its military is “very good” at static and defensive warfare, fighting offensively is a “completely different skill set” that it doesn’t have. Nor can that skill be created in a few months.
We’re Provoking Russia
And so given that tanks won’t help, the United States is pushing Russia into a corner for no reason.
“All you’re doing is making Russia want to go to war,” he told Breitbart. “Far from wanting to deter Russia or making them hesitate and count the costs – it’s having the exact opposite effect across the board in Russia,” which is becoming more aggressive:
“It makes them absolutely think we cannot lose this and double down on their efforts.”…
Davis insisted that reality was “not some fantasy,” but “it’s graphically produced on the ground, you see it.”
“We’re doing everything except physically pulling the trigger,” he asserted.
“We’re providing intelligence. We’re providing ammunition. We’re providing weapons systems [and] repair facilities, literally everything but the pull of the trigger,” he added.
If Russia or China had backed the Taliban in Afghanistan, he added, the U.S. might have gone to war with them over it.
And no one, Davis continued, is asking what all the military aid, including the tanks, is “supposed to accomplish.”
“What is the outcome you see by giving [these tanks]?” he asked:
“What are you trying to produce on the ground? How is this going to benefit the United States of America as opposed to not doing it? What are the pros and cons?” he asked.
“That conversation hasn’t even taken place,” he added….
“We don’t even know what we want to do.”
Even if you claim to want to “win,” Davis insists the term be clearly defined.
“Define ‘win,’” he said. “Because you had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff one week ago repeat what he’s been saying a lot, and one of the few things I agree with him on, [that] he sees no military path for Ukraine to win this war in the foreseeable future, meaning throughout the entire 2023.”
Davis’ main worry is Russia’s atomic arsenal, the largest in the world. Someday, Russia will conclude that “you finally did cross a red line this time and we’re going to take action.”
Russia “reserve[s] the right to attack” any country that provides NATO military supplies “no matter where they are, meaning Poland or in some other NATO country.”
But NATO’s Article 5 says an attack against one NATO ally is an attack against all. Because Russia has “zero chance” of defeating NATO in a conventional war, its only defense would be using nukes:
“So if we try to think we’re going to trigger Article 5 and not trigger nuclear war. I mean, we’re just insane and fooling ourselves.”
A key point: Though NATO and the United States have been waging war against Russia through Ukraine, Russia has not yet retaliated with nukes.
How long Vladimir Putin will refrain from doing so no one knows.
