Ukraine’s Battlefield Wins with US Bradleys Show the Power of Adequate Military Aid

Wes O'Donnell
7 min readSep 4, 2024

Did I ever tell you the story of how a Bradley ran me over in the Army?

It was part of a training exercise in the infantry to teach us to keep calm and still perform our jobs under extreme conditions.

We were to let the Bradley, a stand-in for an enemy tank, roll over us (between the wide tracks) and then pop up and shoot it in the rear armor with an AT-4 anti-tank rocket.

Since then, I’ve had a healthy respect for the Bradley, even though I was a light infantryman and never got the privilege to ride in one.

(Light infantry have to walk everywhere… Or jump from an airplane. Mechanized infantry get to ride around in style in the Bradley or Stryker).

To date, the US has delivered over 300 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine — far more than other armored combat vehicles like the Abrams, of which only 31 have been sent.

Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Regiment, recently told Business Insider that this larger supply has allowed Ukraine to use the Bradleys much more effectively than they could with tanks.

“They’ve got a lot of them,” he says. “If they had a similar number of Abrams or Challengers, they would employ them differently.”

Throughout the war, Ukraine’s Western allies have faced sharp criticism for the way…

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Wes O'Donnell

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Intel Forecaster | Law Student | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians