While these tanks could have benefited from specific defensive upgrades in some cases, the real lesson to be drawn was less about technical deficiencies and more about crew training, competent morale, and sound tactical employment matter more even than “invulnerable” armor. ISIS destroyed eight to ten in a matter of days. Turkey, which had lost a number of M60 Pattons and upgrade M60T Sabra tanks to Kurdish and ISIS fighters eventually deployed its fearsome German-built Leopard 2A4 tanks. In Yemen, numerous Saudi M1s were knocked out by Houthi rebels. Iraqi M1 Abrams tanks not only failed to prevent the capture of Mosul in 2014, but they were captured and turned against their owners. One of their lesser effects has been to deflate the reputations of Western main battle tanks mistakenly thought to be night-invulnerable in the popular imagination. The interconnected conflicts raging across the Middle East today have amounted to a dreadful human catastrophe with spiraling global consequences.
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