Poland signed a contract for 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks

The Polish Minister of Defense announced a contract for 116 battle tanks from the United States to strengthen the Polish Armed Forces.

Citing information from Mariusz Błaszczak, Poland had approved a contract to acquire 116 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks.

“We approved a contract with the United States to buy 116 Abrams tanks on preferential terms,” said Mariusz Błaszczak.

On April 5, 2022, Mariusz Błaszczak, Polish Minister of National Defense, signed a contract to purchase 250 M1A2 Abrams SEP V3 tanks. It is planned that M1A2 SEP V3 tanks will start departing from the American production lines at the end of 2024, and their delivery to Poland will start in early 2025.

Poland has recently handed over a batch of 240 Т-72М1, as well as Т-72М1R tanks, to Ukraine.

Due to the donation of its old Т-72 tanks and the delays in supplying the American M1A2 SEP V3 tanks, Poland decided to purchase used M1 Abrams tanks from the United States.

In 2020, it was announced that the United States Marine Corps was going to withdraw all of its tanks from the combat service. This accounts for approximately 200 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks.

These tanks could be delivered to Poland under a purchase contract. The only problem is that these tanks are of the M1A1 model and do not have the same level of firepower as the SEP V3 modification.

M1A1 Abrams is an upgraded version of the M1 Abrams that was put in service with the U.S. military in 1991.

A total of 4,796 М1А1 tanks were produced for the United States Army and 221 tanks for the United States Marine Corps.

The main armament of the M1A1 Abrams consists of a 120 mm smoothbore M256 gun developed by the German Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH.

M1A1 Abrams is powered by a Honeywell AGT 1500 gas turbine engine, which is connected to the Allison automatic transmission X-1100-3B with four front and two rear gears. It can reach a top speed of approximately 68 km/h with a maximum range of 426 km.