whaaaat?
So if the Russians or Chinese take out a repair/parts depot, the tanks all grind to a halt within a few hours?
“So if the Russians or Chinese take out a repair/parts depot, the tanks all grind to a halt within a few hours?”
The tanks or support vehicles carry some spares for line replaceable items. If the repair depot and the spares warehouses were hit the tanks could continue to operate but would degrade over time. Sufficiently trained people would then start cannibalizing parts off some tanks to keep others going. Some repairs can be done by jury-rigging farm or road equipment like tractors and loaders. But it would be massively inefficient. High tech equipment is dependent on a robust logistics and repair operation. If some sophisticated equipment cost X then the training, logistics and spares are likely to cost at least X again...maybe much more.
There isn’t enough safe space in Ukraine to support the type of facilities required to maintain a fleet of Abrams...or F16’s. I’m sure Zelinsky knows this. But the more stuff he asks for, the more stuff he gets. He’ll continue asking for the moon and he’ll be happy with missiles, drones, etc.
“So if the Russians or Chinese take out a repair/parts depot, the tanks all grind to a halt within a few hours?”
No. If the MTTF is one hour you would expect a failure every hour. Given a large number of tanks it would it would weeks.