47th Brigade M-2s.
Ukrainian army photo
American-made M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles might be the most effective armored vehicles of Russia’s 22-month wider war on Ukraine.
Protecting Ukrainian infantry from mines, missiles and artillery and attacking Russian infantry and vehicles with their lethal 25-millimeter autocannons, the 28-ton, three-crew M-2s have dealt far more damage than they’ve taken.
For proof of that, watch these dramatic drone videos of M-2s in action around Avdiivka.
The Bradleys have taken damage, however. One recent video, from a Ukrainian army vehicle park somewhere behind the front line, depicts 15 or so Brads in various states of destruction. Most with thrown tracks. Some even missing their turrets.
The concentration of wrecked IFVs belies the M-2’s durability, a function of its excellent design and add-on reactive armor. “The Bradley withstood everything,” said one Ukrainian veteran who fought during the M-2’s hardest battle: the 47th Brigade’s failed early-June assault across a Russian minefield south of Mala Tokmachka in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
The 47th Brigade is the only user of the nearly 200 M-2s the United States so far has pledged to the Ukrainian war effort.
The Ukrainian general staff clearly anticipated the brigade, which led the attack in Zaporizhzhia this summer and since has shifted to eastern Ukraine to defend Avdiivka from a Russian counterattack, would lose a lot of vehicles.
On paper, the 47th Brigade operates fewer than a hundred M-2s. But it takes all 200 of the 1990s-vintage vehicles to keep the brigade up to strength.
In the six months since the 47th Brigade first saw combat, it has lost 31 M-2s that independent analysts can confirm: 30 destroyed and one captured. At least another 31 or so M-2s have taken damage.
The Bradley like most Western-style armored vehicles is a renewable resource. Unless it explodes or burns to the point of melting, a damaged M-2 usually is repairable. Engineers tow it from the battlefield and either send it to a 47th Brigade motor pool for quick repairs, or ship it by rail to Poland for deeper rework.
The write-offs—those vehicles it’s impossible to repair—can function as a pool of spare parts for the vehicles it is possible to repair.
Ukraine’s Bradleys, and their crews and passengers, have proved highly survivable in a war that has eaten thousands of less durable IFVs. But that doesn’t mean that first consignment of 200 M-2s will last forever.
The 47th Brigade probably still can field three battalions of Bradleys each with 30 vehicles. But if the Ukrainian army wants the brigade to fight through 2024, it might need more M-2s. And if the army opts to equip a second brigade with Brads, the requirement for fresh vehicles could grow, by a lot.
The good news is that the U.S. Defense Department is sitting on thousands of older M-2s that it could ship to Ukraine. The bad news is that it’s U.S. policy for the White House to pay back the Pentagon for excess weaponry the United States donates to foreign countries.
As of this month, the White House is down to around a billion dollars in funds for backfilling U.S. stocks. That’s a billion dollars the administration of U.S. president Joe Biden probably is saving to pay for ammunition transfers.
Pledging more M-2s probably would have to wait until the U.S. Congress authorizes the $61 billion Biden has proposed to spend on aid to Ukraine in 2024. Pro-Russia Republicans refused to vote on the aid in December after insisting Biden first restrict the right to asylum for refugees to the United States.
Biden and his allies from the Democratic Party are working on a compromise, but it’s unclear whether, or when, Republicans might finally agree to vote.
In the worst case, those 200 M-2s Ukraine already has—many of which are wreckage—are the only M-2s it ever will get. Advocates of a free Ukraine should hope for better.
