Victor Davis Hanson: When I Cruised Iraq in an Abrams Tank
Victor Davis Hanson /
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson answers a round of questions submitted by listeners. Here he’s asked about tanks and tank warfare. This episode was recorded before Hanson’s major surgery on Dec. 30.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
JACK FOWLER: Here’s the second question from Matt. It’s entirely different subject. He says “After high school, I served in the Marine Corps. I was an M1A1 Abrams tank crewman deployed to Iraq. Videos I have seen of M1A1 tanks being used in Ukraine, oftentimes the Ukrainians appear to use the Abrams as a standalone heavy tank, such as an M26 Pershing or an IS-2 Russian tank from World War II.
“I’m aware many M1A1 Abrams have been destroyed and or captured by the Russians. In your opinion, if the Abrams tanks were used in the same manner of the U.S. Army or Marines, such as working in a section, two tanks up to a company size 14 tanks, will the Abrams may have made a better impact on the battlefield and they have a higher number of working tanks.”
So that’s about tank strategy, essentially.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Well, I can tell you that when I was at the Naval Academy for a year, I had a security clearance, and I would go about once every two weeks to Andrew Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment. And it was classified, but I did hear a couple of lectures there and also a classified lecture from other people.
And people can correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t think it’s classified now, but I think it’s true of all weapons systems that we have. When we export any weapon system to anybody other than the closest ally we have, we have a general rule that the weapon system that we export would not be able to have equity with the weapon systems that we have.
Now what would that mean? That would mean in the case of the Abrams A1, that has a very sophisticated type of ceramic hardened steel layered and reactive armor on it. You know, the reactive where you hit it and a little explosion pushes the shell out.
I am told that if we send Abrams to Egypt or anybody else those Abrams tanks, if they got into a fight with American Abrams tanks, would not be as successful.
But I don’t think we broadcast that. And I think that’s true of a lot of other systems as well.
It’s not that we just give old stuff away. We make sure that if we get in a war in the Middle East, for example, given changing alliances, and we’ve given Jordan a bunch of Abrams tanks, and they’ve attacked Israel and Israel has the Merkava, maybe they had some Abrams, that the ones that we authorize will be able to withstand the 120 smoothbore round better than the ones that they have.
FOWLER: What about as for fighting in packs as solo versus multiple tanks?
HANSON: Well, my office is next to H.R. McMaster, and he’s pretty famous because in the first Gulf War, he was an Army captain, and that had been the largest tank battle since the Yom Kippur War of ‘73.
They had about 35 Abrams and they had their volleys at the range and the velocity and the bore. And they took out each one, hit their, except one I think, T-72 top Russian tanks. And they blew them up without losing anybody.
And then when I was embedded, the first or second time, I can’t remember which, they asked me if I wanted to go with some Iraqi people for an afternoon.
So, I went in, the Iraqis showed me, It was very funny. They gave me an M4, I think, or maybe it was a Vietnam-style M16 and said, “Take the gun and drop it in the sand and jump on it.” And I did. And after about a minute, it misfired. And then they gave me an AK Russian one, they’re semi-automatic. And they did the same thing, and it kept firing.
But I could tell you that I couldn’t hit anything with the AK-47, and I could hit something with it. I’m not a very good shot. And then they were daring me to drive their T-72. And they said, you’ll never be able to drive it.
But it had levers like—my grandfather after World War II bought a 1946, I don’t know what they call it, a D1 or D2 Cat, and we used it, and I used to screw around with it I was a kid. But then I rode in an Abrams for, I don’t know, half an hour and believe me, I could not believe the difference. It was like a Cadillac.
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