Jason Lambright has an interesting suggestion over at his blog, Interstellar Valley. The Ukrainians are in dire need of working tanks, and there are a whole bunch of reasons why giving them or selling them M1’s is a poor idea. He has a better one.

I think that providing the Ukrainians with the M1 is, while well-intentioned, not the best idea.

I have a better one.

We can give the Ukrainians the very capable and suitable M60 Patton. They are in service worldwide, have seen lots of action, and we have an unknown, probably large, amount (think thousands) of them sitting in mothballs, doing nothing.

Why. I’ll address this point by point, using the bullet statements above as a guide.

First, our NATO allies don’t want the old M-60. They want the latest and greatest, and this is understandable. However, the M-60 had no problems smoking Sov armor in several wars, most notably with the USMC in Gulf One. Yes, the M-60 isn’t cutting-edge, but it doesn’t need to be. It needs to kill Soviet designs, and it has and will. We can probably supply thousands of these tanks in a shortened timeline. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

I had no idea that the Marines sent M-60s to Gulf 1. But if they worked there, they’d probably work just as well in Ukraine.