It also requested spare and repair parts, maintenance, support equipment, special tool and test equipment, personnel training and equipment, publications and technical documentation, as well as US government and contractor engineering and logistics support services. In August 2007, Egypt requested the $1.32bn foreign military sale of an additional 125 M1A1 tanks, which would bring the country’s fleet to 1,005 M1A1 tanks.Įgypt also requested 125 M256 armament systems, 125 M2 50-calibre machine guns, 250 M240 7.62mm machine guns, 125 AGT-1500 M1A1 series tank engines and transmissions, and 120mm test cartridges. The upgrade involves rebuilding to a ‘like new’ condition, similar to the US Army Abrams integrated management programme (AIM). In June 2006, Saudi Arabia requested the foreign military sale of 58 M1A1 tanks and the upgrade of these and the 315 M1A2 already in the Saudi inventory to the M1A2S configuration. The remaining 41, to be based in Darwin, were delivered in March 2007. The first 18 tanks were delivered to the Australian Army at the School of Armour in Victoria in September 2006. The contract was signed in November 2005 and the first five were handed over in February 2006 at GDLS in Lima, Ohio. The tanks that were promised by Berlin and Washington will not be delivered until spring or summer at the earliest - not in time to help Ukraine defend hotly contested towns and cities near Bakhmut, in the country’s east, where Russian forces have been recently advancing in a grueling ground assault.In March 2004, the Australian Army announced the purchase of 59 US Army M1A1 tanks to enter service from 2007. Ukrainian troops still need to be trained to use the powerful Western war machines, and moving them into the conflict zone is far from an easy task. "Soon to be a regular sight prowling the fields of Ukraine,” Britain’s Defense Ministry crowed in a Twitter post with a photo of a German Leopard 2 tank and a British-made Challenger 2 tank chewing up a muddy training field in Poland. "These can help Ukraine to defend itself, win and prevail as an independent nation,” said Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general. But it may be months before the tanks rumble across the battlefield. The decisions by Germany and the United States to send battle tanks to Ukraine, reversing months of resistance, on Wednesday prompted additional pledges from across Europe and predictions of victory over Russia.
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