Nearly a third of the Bradley armored vehicles that the United States has provided to Ukraine may have already been lost or damaged, according to open source data, demonstrating the extent to which Kyiv's counteroffensive against Russia is proving to be a hard and costly slog.
In January, the Biden administration announced it was sending Ukraine no fewer than 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, an armored personnel carrier that pairs heavy firepower with the ability to transport about 10 soldiers.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade is the only unit known to have received the vehicles. And leaked Pentagon documents from February indicate the 47th Brigade was due to receive a total of 99 of them. But other reporting suggests the United States has delivered as many as 109 of the vehicles, which were first deployed on the battlefield in April.
Oryx, an open-source military research group, reports that 34 Bradleys have now been visually confirmed as having been abandoned, damaged, or destroyed. As Insider previously reported, more than a dozen were lost or disabled in a few days of fighting in June, when Ukraine formally announced its bid to retake territory conquered by Russia following last year's full-scale invasion.
That means nearly a third of the Bradley vehicles may have already been lost or damaged.
The losses are not unexpected and appear to have been concentrated in the first few days of the counteroffensive as Ukrainian soldiers sought to cross territory that was heavily mined by entrenched Russian forces. Ukrainians have credited the vehicle with saving lives.
"Thanks to it, I am standing here now," one soldier told ABC News last month. "If we were using some Soviet armored personnel carrier we would all probably be dead after the first hit."
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