An M1A2 Abrams tank of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division is seen at Nowa Deba, Poland, in December 2023. Polish soldiers recently received proficiency training on the Abrams tank and are preparing for a live fire with U.S. counterparts. (Bernabe Lopez III/U.S. Army)
The Polish army’s push to incorporate American-made Abrams tanks into its fighting formation will take a step forward this month, when a Polish crew for the first time takes aim at targets in a landmark gunnery that will test the unit’s combat fitness.
In recent weeks, soldiers from the Fort Bliss, Texas-based 1st Battalion, 35th Armored Regiment along with Polish counterparts were preparing for the live fire with a set of tabletop drills aimed at proficiency on the M1A2 Abrams, the Army said in a statement Thursday.
U.S. soldiers at a Polish base in Nowa Deba are working with a platoon that was among the first in Poland to operate the U.S. tank, first the M1A1 and now the more advanced M1A2.
The training and upcoming gunnery will “build a model for them to use in the Polish army for the Abrams platform,” Sgt. 1st Class Casey Laing, a platoon sergeant assigned to the battalion, said in the statement.
U.S. Army Sgt. Matthew Prior, a tank gunner, grades Polish soldiers in Nowa Deba, Poland, in December 2023. A live fire exercise in January will see the Americans join the Poles they've been training how to use Abrams tanks. (Bernabe Lopez III/U.S. Army)
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st. Class Casey Laing demonstrates to Polish soldiers how to disassemble, assemble and check an M240 machine gun on the M1A2 Abrams tank at Nowa Deba, Poland, in December 2023. Laing is a platoon sergeant assigned to 1st Battalion, 35th Armored Regiment. (Bernabe Lopez III/U.S. Army)
For the past several years, Warsaw has been on a weapons-buying spree to modernize the Polish armed forces. Those efforts have only intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
For the Polish army, the Abrams tank serves as the centerpiece of those modernization efforts. Poland began receiving the first of its tanks last year and will incorporate 366 of them into its arsenal in the coming years.
The fleet will be a mix of the M1A1 and the more state-of-the-art M1A2 version. In June, Polish officials also announced that a center for maintaining and servicing the tanks will be created in Poznan, which is home to the U.S. Army’s first permanent base in the country.
At the unit level, soldiers are focused on what it takes to get the most out of the Abrams’ firepower. Troops in Nowa Deba studied the mechanics of the tank, ranging from weapons disassembly and assembly to gunnery-related skills, the Army said.
Second Lt. Pawel Bartel, a Polish tank commander, said that the work is paying dividends and that occasional language barriers were being managed.
The U.S. tankers are “specialists when it comes to this equipment, and we can learn from you and exchange our experiences,” he said.
