Recently, after the defeat in Avdiivka, the Ukrainian side has officially deployed the famous M1 Abrams tanks aided by the United States to the Russian-Ukrainian front line, perhaps for the sake of boosting morale. There is information that the first four of these tanks were "coincidentally" deployed to the Avdiivka front, and the Ukrainian army's move is obviously intended and meaningful.
You must know that although the United States has supported this tank to Ukraine a long time ago, for the sake of the "face" of the United States, the United States has always restricted the use of this tank by the Ukrainian army. Now whether it is a German-made Leopard 2 tank or a British Challenger 2 tank, they have already been destroyed by the Ukrainian army, and the Ukrainian army has just been defeated, so it is impossible to go up again. So in this case, Ukraine finally drove this American tank to the front line. However, it is surprising that not long after the deployment of this tank, it has already appeared to be "destroyed", so what is going on?
According to relevant reports abroad, the scene of the destruction of an armored vehicle in Ukraine that resembles the M1 tank aided by the United States has been circulated. The car was allegedly destroyed by a unit of the 21st Brigade of the Russian Army near Avdiivka. However, although the appearance of the car is very similar to the M1, it is not an M1 tank, but an armored engineering vehicle, the scientific name is the M11500 assault engineering vehicle (ABV), which was aided by the United States to the 47th Armored Brigade of the Ukrainian Army.
The reason why the appearance of this engineering vehicle is very similar to the M1 tank is that this car is a modified vehicle of the M1 tank, and the chassis and many other parts are exactly the same as the M1 tank. Therefore, it makes sense to round off to say that this matter means that the M1 tank was destroyed. What's more, compared to the M1 tank, this modification of the M1 tank is actually more valuable.
The main role of this armored engineering assault is to be used for battlefield sweeping, demining, etc., and can basically be regarded as being used to prepare for the deployment of M1 tanks in advance. You must know that the United States has given Ukraine a total of more than 30 M1 tanks, but only 6 of these engineering vehicles have been given, which shows that the loss of one this time has a greater impact on the Ukrainian army than the loss of one M1.
What's more noteworthy is that the level of armor protection of the M11500 assault engineering vehicle is almost the same as that of the M1, that is, once the M1 is really deployed to the battlefield, perhaps its fate will not be much better than that of the Leopard 2 and Challenger 2, especially when the United States has given Ukraine not the strongest M1A2, but the earlier version of the M1A1 (the technical level of the M1A1 is not as good as the Leopard 2 and Challenger 2), even more so.
End of this issue. 