In the first Gulf War, Bradley crews reported that they could have completed their deployments of up to 120 miles-missions that took place over the course of 82 hours-on a single tank of gas. Air transportable, C-17s can quickly get the vehicles to Ukraine frontiers.

Logistically, the Bradley is a better fit for Ukraine than almost any large NATO main battle tank. While crews came up with a range of minor suggestions and improvements, they reported killing Soviet-made tanks with the main gun and employing the TOW missile to destroy tanks up to 3,700 meters away. In 1992, the GAO released a report on the platform’s utility during Desert Storm, reporting that almost 90% of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle fleet could move, shoot, and communicate over the course of the battle. But that may not be necessary, since both Bradley variants carry Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles, capable of destroying any tank currently in Russian service.īattle-tested twice, the advantages and limitations of the Bradley in the field are, by now, well understood. Firing specialized tungsten armor-piercing ammunition, a Bradley can use the big chain gun dispatch T-72 tanks.

Both are “mini-tanks,” centered around a turret-mounted 25mm M243 Bushmaster and a coaxial 7.62 mm machine gun. But the only real difference is that the M3 swaps out infantry space for a larger ammunition load. Today, the Bradley comes two basic flavors, the M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle and the M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicle. producing almost 7,000 of the vehicles, the Bradley has always operated in the background, overshadowed by the more glamorous M-1 Abrams tank, or sidelined by counterinsurgency-focused vehicles. While those initial qualms were overcome, with the U.S. As an uneasy compromise between a highly-protected tank and a lightly-armored fighting vehicle, the platform was tarred as being a poor fit for most battlefield tasks. As a faster, better protected update to the M113 armored personnel carrier, the Bradley worked in tandem with the far larger Abrams Main Battle Tank. The M2/M3 Bradley, when it entered service in 1983, was designed to take on Russia’s emerging fleet of infantry support vehicles. Ukraine is perfect territory for America’s mini-tank. What Is The M2/M3 Bradley and Why Does It Work For Ukraine?

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