Romania commits to Abrams

On 9 November 2023, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) published a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) request by Romania for the procurement of 54 M1A2C Abrams main battle tanks (MBTs), also known as the M1A2 SEPv3 standard.

This contract has been anticipated for some time now, with Lt Gen Teodor Incicaș, Head of the Romanian Ministry of National Defence’s General Directorate for Armaments, noting his country’s intent to purchase Abrams family tanks in a podcast aired on 3 March 2023. Prior to this, General Dynamics were known to have publicly pitched the Abrams family to Romania back in May 2022, at the BSDA exhibition in Bucharest. At the time, a Romanian industry source told this author that the sale was seen as very likely to go ahead, with the Romanian armed forces being in the process of deciding whether to go for the SEPv3 or SEPv4 variant. However, with the US Army announcing that they were cancelling development of the SEPv4 upgrade on 6 September 2023, in favour of developing the M1E3 variant, Romania’s dilemma appears to have been settled.

Prior to selecting Abrams, as far back as 2018, Romania was known to have been pursuing the Leopard 2 family to meet its tank requirements, under the European Defence Agency’s (EDA) OMBT-Leo2 project. This was a vehicle pooling and sharing programme which was intended to take surplus Leopard 2 family vehicles from existing users in NATO member states and upgrading them to the Leopard 2A7 standard, and then leasing, renting, or selling the upgraded vehicles to other NATO members.

At the time, Romania had a stated requirement for 60 vehicles, with 54 planned to be used to outfit an armoured battalion, and the remaining six to be used for crew training. Yet by spring 2022, this programme was considered to be on indefinite hold, according to a Romanian industry source. The reason behind this was not completely clear, but a reasonable assumption is that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Leopard 2 user countries became reluctant to give away their own hardware.

Notable absences

Romania’s M1A2C purchase is part of a larger FMS request package valued at an estimated maximum of USD 2.53 billion, and includes the following vehicles and associated equipment, along with various spare parts, support, and training:

Looking at the table, there appear to be some omissions from this package which one would expect to be present for this kind of purchase. Most notable among these is the lack of crew training vehicles, since presumably Romania’s planned a requirement still stands at 54 vehicles to outfit an armoured battalion, plus six vehicles for training, as when they were considering their Leopard 2 family procurement. As such, Romania presumably retains a requirement for six further tanks for training purposes, however, it is plausible that the purchase is planned for a later date.

Another notable omission is the lack of an armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) round. Given that the likeliest potential regional opponent Romanian forces would realistically face is Russia, one would have expected the inclusion of a projectile from the US M829 APFSDS family, such as the M829A4. However, this appears to not be the case, meaning that for the time being, the vehicle’s anti-armour capability will be limited. Romanis will be receiving the M1147 HEMP-T round, which has multiple fuzing modes and is understood to use a high explosive warhead with fragmentation sleeve wrapped around it to improve performance against infantry and soft-skinned vehicles. However, this would mainly be employed against infantry in the open, structures, and light vehicles.

A kinetic anti-armour round would be desirable, as Russia tends to equip most of its tanks with explosive reactive armour (ERA), which is particularly effective against high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) threats, often reducing penetration by around 50-80% depending on the ERA package. The value of ERA has been shown multiple times in the war in Ukraine, where it has allowed both Russian and Ukrainian vehicles to shrug off ATGMs, RPGs, and tank-fired HEAT rounds. While some ERA packages can also reduce APFSDS projectile penetration, they typically do so to a lesser degree than with HEAT warheads, meaning that an APFSDS round would therefore have been a fairly logical choice to counter the threat of Russian armour. However, as with the training vehicles, it is possible that these will be procured at a later date.

Out with the old, in with the new!

The contracted M1A2C tanks are understood to be replacing Romania’s currently in-service TR-85M1 Bizonul (ENG: Bison) MBTs, which entered service back in 1997. This is an upgraded variant of the TR-85 tank, which entered service in 1986, and was derived from the TR-580 (also known as TR-77), which was a Romanian domestically-developed offshoot of the Soviet T-54/T-55 design, that entered Romanian Army service in 1979. The TR-580 family shared a lot of design commonality with T-54/T-55, such as a very similar turret, but features some noteworthy departures, such as a lengthened hull compared to T-54/T-55, and a domestically-developed engine derived from the Leopard 1 MTU MB838 Ca-M500 engine. Despite being an upgraded variant, the TR-85M1 is considered to be effectively obsolete by contemporary tank standards, and Romania has been long overdue for procurement of a modern tank design.

Indeed, Romania has been keenly aware of this – speaking at the Future Armoured Vehicles 2018 conference, Lt Col Valentin Torcica, Chief of the Romanian Ministry of Defence’s Armoured Office, noted that the Romanian Army intended to procure a modern tank design, stating that their requirements included a 120 mm smoothbore gun, modern C4I capabilities, a secondary armament capable of elevating up to 70°, along with good survivability and sustainability.

The M1A2C broadly meets these requirements, with the possible minor exception of a secondary weapon with 70° elevation – the M153A1E1 CROWS-LP (also known as the Protector RS4 Low-Profile) is understood to have the same depression and elevation limits as previous variants of the CROWS family (formerly Protector M151/M153/Nordic, now known as RS4), from -20° to +60°. However, this is a relatively minor point to pick on. All told, there is little question that the new M1A2C tanks will provide Romania with a major leap forward in terms of armoured capability, especially given what they are replacing.

Mark Cazalet