Even if there wasn't some theoretical advantage to prolonging Russia's engagement to bleed them, or the risk of current tech falling into enemy hands, there just isn't the infrastructure in place to keep Abrams etc in the fight. Hell the fuel and ammo difference alone would be a logistical nightmare.
Afaik, while that's true for Abrams, it doesn't hold for Leopards. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can comment.
Probably those Leopards Ukraine gets will need to be stationed opposite the Belarussian border and near Kiev, and could not much alter the course of the war unless another invasion were attempted there.
We're talking oldest Leopards and Marders here.
Also, it's not just about the vehicles in the Bundeswehr. It's about rallying the Rheinmetall clients to create a pool that can be donated from various European countries, for example adding the excuse to upgrade the european fleet to the latest Leopard standard. It has to start with political decisions, though. The Bundeswehr is fully behind this proposal (it was purposefully leaked to the press early on in the war).
Not questioning this but do you have a source for that?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/olaf-scholz-german-chance...
It doesn't say that the Bundeswehr was behind it, though. Just that "other top officials" were.
Ammo is already supplied in western standards (for example 155mm, even precision shells) in hundreds of thousands of tons.
This works fine for America because we invest heavily into logistics in the military, but other countries probably won't be helped by having to double up their supply to most tank operations.
And even if they get an Abrams that has half the range they'd take it at this point.
They go out of their way to make everything diesel. two notable examples: there is a motorcycle reconisence squad and the us army had custom Kawasaki klr made with diesel engines for them. the lycoming company had a great deal of trouble making a small diesel engine for a little army drone.
The lycoming el-005 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2T2lvQXBM
The reason is logistics, the army only wants to ship one type of fuel, and go out of their way to make that happen.