A US-supplied M1Abrams tank was recently destroyed in Ukraine by a single shot from Russia’s T-72B3 tank, the third such armed vehicle that has been obliterated in the special military operation zone in the past several weeks.
Several major factors, including the crew’s skill and intelligence work, added to the T-72B3 winning a first duel against the Abrams, Russian expert Alexander Bartosh at the Center for Military-Diplomatic Analysis and Assessments of the League of Military Diplomats said in an interview with Sputnik.
Another aspect is Russian military technical specialists, who very accurately identified the Abrams' vulnerabilities and calculated how and where the T-72B3 should fire, according to Bartosh.
He explained that “it’s necessary to hit the Abrams’ area between the turret and the hull, so that the tank can suffer severe and irreparable damage, after which it will be unable to run on the battlefield or carry out combat missions.”
Last but not least, the performance characteristics of the T-72B3, which is equipped with "an excellent gun and special equipment, made it possible to destroy the Abrams with the first shot," the Russian expert pointed out.
The T-72B3's ability to obliterate the "miraculous Abrams" with one shot shows the professionalism of the Russian military and "the inability of America and Western countries to endanger Russia," Bartosh stressed.
When asked whether the destruction of the third Abrams will affect the West’s drive to send more similar armed vehicles to Ukraine, Bartosh said that Western countries’ resolve "has already been shaken," not least because the destruction of the Abrams and the Leopards is “a serious blow to the competitiveness of Western firms."
"Secondly, the West sees that its military equipment is used on the battlefield in Ukraine not as they expected, namely, this military hardware turns out to be vulnerable," Bartosh emphasized.
On the whole, the Russian military-industrial complex shows its superiority - when it comes to both tanks and aircraft – over Ukraine’s Western-supplied equipment, the expert pointed out.
It’s worth noting that the first two Abrams tanks were destroyed by Russian forces with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as kamikaze drones, which are widely used in the special operation zone.