This is where the M1A2T’s role becomes more compelling than that of a static armored barrier. The Abrams combines protection, firepower and mobility, but Lusheng-2 focused on whether those qualities could be sustained through repeated movement and changing missions. Smoke-generation units supported maneuver, electronic-warfare elements practiced reconnaissance and jamming, and logistics teams kept armored forces supplied as positions shifted. Those supporting capabilities are essential to a rapid counterattack because the decisive element is not simply the tank’s ability to destroy a target, but the speed with which commanders can preserve, reposition and recommit armored forces before an opponent regains momentum. In this sense, Lusheng-2 tested the system surrounding the Abrams as much as the tank itself.
Lusheng-2 points to an increasingly dynamic role for Taiwan’s M1A2T fleet. Rather than treating the Abrams as a platform expected to hold one defensive position until exhausted, the exercise showed an emphasis on successive resistance, controlled relocation, forward replenishment and the preservation of armored combat power across multiple phases of battle. For Taiwan, the value of the M1A2T may lie as much in its ability to remain mobile after absorbing pressure as in its firepower at the opening of an engagement. The broader concept emerging from the exercise is clear: slow the attack, preserve the tanks, sustain their mobility and keep enough armored strength available to shift quickly from defense into a counterattack when the tactical opportunity appears.
I don’t know if we ever reached a point where it was that realistic that China would invade Taiwan with a literal military assault, but the idea is a pipedream now that Taiwan has a large (108) amount of fully modernized abrams tanks.
China’s planning for an amphibious assault and occupation of Taiwan would first have to figure out how to predict, contain and neutralize the forces these Abrams tanks serve as the keystone for, and there just isn’t any situation you can count on being able to fully destroy or subdue more than two abrams tanks together…it is always a dangerous gamble which makes the kind of planning necessary for such an operation an order of magnitude more complex.
China has to answer “Where will the abrams tanks be?” and “Where will they go?” at every step of their plan and you just can’t realistically do that with machines like these.
This also means people don’t have to define their politics out of a fear of China, which is really unproductive in how it drags down a critical conversation about ourselves and China.
Relevant video
Well I hope you’re right that China recognises it isn’t doable because 2027 is next year and I’d rather not experience WW3
The chances of “World Wars” starting may be very little.
While allies will bind together, the era of dragging vast number of colonies and territories from other side of the globe into war, like the Europeans did for cannon fodder are very low.
They can’t just pull soldiers from Africa and loot food from India for free, while they starve local population anymore. They have real sovereignty.
No ones going to fight someone else’s wars unless they are forced to, as you’ve already seen with Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran.
Regional conflicts may be common but yea, WW3 is very unlikely.
What evidence does China have that the current most advanced generation of abrams tanks has any kind of easily exploitable weakness? Some have been destroyed, that is what happens to tanks especially old ones but if anything recent history has proven 108 modern abrams tanks is a pretty futile nut to try to crack if they are properly supported and trained.
Taiwan isn’t that big, 108 Abrams in that size landscape is very very intimidating if you cannot reliably predict where they will be.
If the people that live where the tanks are don’t want them there, that is of course a different matter.
Armchair generals assemble!
You heard it chair! GO! CHAIR GO! Chair Execute MOVE!
…
~I remain motionless in my armchair~
