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The 47th Brigade’s Bradley crews have been fighting hard. One crew recently scored one of the longest direct tank-kills of the Russia-Ukraine war when it hit a Russian T-80 tank with a wire-guided TOW missile from a mile away under the cover of darkness.
This year of fighting has cost the 47th Brigade nearly 80 Bradleys that the analysts at Oryx have identified: 37 destroyed and dozens more damaged, abandoned or captured. Some of the damaged and abandoned vehicles are recoverable and fixable; some surely are write-offs.
All that is to say, the 47th Brigade was burning though its reserves of M-2s fast—until fresh U.S. aid finally arrived.
Now there are enough replacement M-2s in Ukraine, or on the way to Ukraine, to bring the 47th Brigade back up to full strength, make good another year’s worth of losses and also equip a second brigade with the tough IFVs with their powerful 25-millimeter auto-cannons and tank-killing TOW missiles.
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