President Emmanuel Macron's Jan. 4 announcement that France was prepared to send a consignment of AMX-10RC to Ukraine that seemingly broke a diplomatic impasse about NATO providing serious armor to the embattled nation. The AMX-10RC, a light tank in all but name, is the most heavy-duty Western armored fighting vehicle pledged to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
French soldiers from the 1st Regiment Ma
Somewhat down-shifting the debate into the level of semantic absurdity, Wolfgang Hellmich, the defense policy spokesman for Scholz’s ruling Social Democratic Party, claimed that Leopard 2s were “attack tanks,” adding that what Kyiv needed was “tanks for defense.” Moreover, stocks of spare parts and 125-millimeter shells, the standard caliber for the majority of ex-Soviet and Russian-made tank guns, are also becoming scarce. Western governments, notably the U.S. and UK, have been buying up all the stocks they can, but readily acknowledge that this is a temporary stopgap.
Western tanks store their ammunition in specially protected compartments equipped with “blow off panels,” designed to channel any ammunition explosion to the outside of the vehicle, expressly to stop this phenomena from happening. The doctrine behind the design of most Western tanks — using a fourth crew member to manually load the ammunition rather than the autoloader — makes a catastrophic detonation far less likely.
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Is it time for the West to give Ukraine heavy tanks?President Emmanuel Macron’s Jan. 4 announcement that France was prepared to send a consignment of AMX-10RC to Ukraine that seemingly broke a diplomatic impasse about NATO providing serious armor to the embattled nation. The AMX-10RC, a light tank in all but name, is the most heavy-duty Western armored fighting vehicle pledged to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
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