New footage released by multiple Russian sources on July 22 shows multiple M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles being destroyed on the eastern Ukrainian front. According to reports, the video, taken near the settlement of Rabotino in the Zaporozhye region about 50 kilometers east of the Dnieper River, shows four damaged and badly damaged vehicles crowded on flat terrain, and a destroyed Ukrainian tank can be seen in the distance. The full composition of this armored unit and the means of destroying it remain uncertain. Widely acknowledged by Western and Russian sources, Bradley’s losses, confirmed by open sources, were in the dozens. In June, photos of the first batch of vehicles suffering heavy losses emerged, alongside German-supplied Leopard 2A6 tanks, and since then Washington has continued to commit to new batches of vehicles. Shortly before the first deliveries of the vehicles in April, the Pentagon claimed the Bradley tank was a “tank killer” that could provide “a level of firepower and armor that confers an advantage on the battlefield.” While lacking a large caliber gun like the M1 Abrams tank’s 120mm smoothbore gun, the Bradley’s anti-tank missiles and depleted uranium rounds provided some anti-armor capability. However, the level of armor protection and survivability of the class has often been criticized since the development phase.
The U.S. produced Bradleys in large numbers during the last decade of the Cold War, and until 1995 the U.S. kept thousands of Bradleys in its domestic inventory, which had been expected to remain until retirement. The fact that these vehicles are not expected to make a significant contribution to the war in East Asia, which is currently the Pentagon’s main focus, means that depleting reserves to support the war in Ukraine is not a significant loss for the United States. Since production of the class has long since been discontinued, Bradley’s reputation is not expected to have an impact on the status of U.S. arms exports, and the loss of Patriot batteries in Ukraine has become a more sensitive issue for the U.S. than other asset types such as Patriot batteries. Ukraine attempted to compensate for Bradley’s very limited protection against anti-armor rounds by applying Soviet explosive reactive armor, although modern Russian anti-tank missiles, such as the air-launched Vikhr-1, which caused significant damage to Ukrainian armor, were specifically designed to counter this form of armor protection.