The Pentagon plans to expedite the delivery of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, according to a US official and a source familiar with the situation, and to provide vital equipment to kyiv this fall. The Biden administration has pledged to supply Ukraine with 31 advanced M1 Abrams tanks after months of rejecting the idea of ??deploying the hard-to-maintain main battle tanks in the country. The new plan speeds up delivery by about a year, according to a congressional adviser familiar with the matter.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on this information because the Defense Department had not previously offered any specific date for delivering the tanks to Ukraine, saying only that it would take “months.”
“We’re working on it,” White House spokesman John Kirby told CNN on Tuesday. “There are some changes that can be made to the process to speed it up.”
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has considered various options to speed up delivery and has reached a determination that would cut delivery time by about a year, a congressional adviser told Reuters.
Options Austin could have considered include changing positions in the delivery queue or using US tanks that have had sensitive equipment removed so they cannot be captured and studied by Russian troops.
The General Dynamics Corp production line is currently completing about 12 Abrams tanks a month. Funding to alter the Abrams tanks would come from a fund known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which allows President Joe Biden’s administration to source weapons from industry rather than turning to US weapons stockpiles. A round of USAI funding is being prepared for later this month, said sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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