Considering difficulties with Western tanks for Ukraine, when even the withdrawn Abrams tanks from the reserve is a significant resource for the United States, and the transfer of the Leopard 2 may require a complex collective decision, the situation with IFVs is different.
In particular, the American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, which is unofficially considered as one of the "working options". The main advantage of the Bradley for the Armed Forces of Ukraine is that the USA has the opportunity to transfer it in significant quantities, and this is much better than the hypothetical scenario when the European NATO countries begin to allocate each "several samples" of different units, such as the CV90, Marder, Warrior, ASCOD, Dardo, AMX -10P.
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The fact is that only in the reserves of the US Army there are 2.8 thousand Bradleys in all versions (including the reconnaissance M3), which is a significant number.
An example of the fact that for the USA Bradley infantry fighting vehicles have a fairly low cost can be their delivery to Croatia. Back in 2017, discussions began to transfer about 80-90 BMPs to this country in the M2A2 version from the reserves of the US Army. Zagreb thought for a long time and agreed to purchase 89 Bradley IFVs only at the beginning of 2022. Of them only 62 were to be fully equipped, 5 were to go to crews training, and 22 were supplied as "cannibalism" kits. According to the agreement, the first vehicles should arrive in the new year of 2023.
Formally, the supply of these machines cost 196.4 million dollars, of which 51.1 million dollars was borne by the United States itself. That is, Croatia paid only 1.63 million dollars per one Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. But the fact is that this agreement was part of a general program to restore and modernize vehicles and purchase weapons for them, and its total cost was already 630 million euros. Taking into account that a stock of 1.6 thousand TOW 2 missiles was purchased and modernization was carried out over a long period of time, the price can be considered adequate.
And in 2020, it was proposed to transfer as many as 350 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles to Greece under a similar aid program. But it seems that Athens has not made appropriate moves towards obtaining these vehicles since that time. And in 2017, Lebanon turned out to be more agile and managed to receive 32 Bradleys as aid.
That is, the value indicator relative to Bradley may not be as important as, for example, in the case of the transfer of Abrams tanks. But in the case of Ukraine, there’s another important factor, which is service.
At first glance, there are currently no operators of these IFVs in Europe, but in fact there is one: it is the US Army itself, or rather its European command. In particular, the combat group of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division of the US Army is stationed in Europe and is armed with the Bradley. And it would be extremely surprising, in case of a whole brigade, that the appropriate material and technical basis for maintenance was not deployed for it.
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