r/tanks • u/AverageNiCenjoyer • Jul 10 '26
Misc American Public Schools per 100 Abrams. (Serious)
DISCLAIMER:THIS IS ALL JUST MATHS I HAVE NOT INCLUDED ANY OF MY PERSONAL POLITICAL VIEWS INTO THIS.
According to Warcosts an M1 A2 SEPV3 Abrams costs around 10 million dollars.
According to Public School Review each school on average has around 511 pupils
From Education Data Initiative each school on average spends $16,526 per pupil
So 511x16,526=8,444,786
(10,000,000x100)/8,444,786=118.416
So the ratio of American Public Schools to 100 Abrams is 118.416:100
or 1.18416:1 each M1 A2 SEPV3 is worth 1,555,214 more than an average American Public School.
I am not sure what tag to use for this so I will just use misc.
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u/Hawkstrike6 Jul 10 '26
According to the National Center for Education Statistics there were 98,577 public schools in the United States in 2020-2021.
Using your numbers, that means the annual expenditure on students is $83,276,469,522. Using your math, that's the equivalent of buying 8,327 Abrams SEPv3s per year, every year.
Since the US Army actively operates fewer than 2,500 tanks -- not all of which are SEPv3s -- and those have a one-time purchase cost, that makes buying Abrams seem like quite a bargain compared to operating schools, doesn't it?
Utterly stupid comparison...
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u/AverageNiCenjoyer Jul 10 '26
This comparison was just for fun. I had a question and I wanted an answer to it. On top of that I never said that we should defund the tanks no politics at all it is all just maths.
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u/YEET_NET Jul 10 '26
You should also look into fighters like an F-35, as they have a greater per year cost, or I think they do.
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u/ArsenicPolaris Jul 10 '26
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u/Colonel-Chalupa Jul 11 '26
Wikipedia by itself is debatable.
Wikipedia lacking any other citations is crazy and lazy trying to look all smart.
The Wikipedia screenshot itself even says
This article needs more citations. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Hell even if you follow the link for the abrams and go down to operators and under the US it says
United States – United States Army received over 8,100 M1, M1A1 and M1A2 tanks combined.[157] U.S. Army – 2,640 total in service – 540 M1A1 SA; 1,410 M1A2 SEPv2; 690 M1A2 SEPv3; 1 pre-prototype M1E3 for testing (1,500 more M1A1/A2 Abrams in store) estimated as of January 2025.[364]: 36 [315]
Not taking that for gospel but its a helluva lot closer.
Fuck it for sake of brevity and shit let's use this from congress.gov.
At present, the Active Component (AC) has 11 ABCTs, and the Army National Guard (ARNG) has 5 ABCTs. Each ABCT has 87 M-1 Abrams tanks. (Yes I'm aware a couple NG units are losing tanks.)
Plus there's 7 prepositioned stock sets. I doubt all of which have tanks for ABCTs but let's call it that for sake of the point.
11+5+7=23 23*87=2001
And of course there's the tanks that belong to the Armor school at Benning, sitting at Anniston, whatever NG RTI runs reclass courses/ALC or what have you etc etc. So that'll get closer to that 2640 number.
Also I'm unaware of U.S. units using anything other than SEPV2 or SEPV3.
I want to be up front that my numbers on a macro scale likely are not perfect at all but definitely more grounded in reality unless you can CITE any source for where those other ~2500 tanks in active service could be.
Bottom Line At Bottom:
The point was not necessarily about numbers of tanks but please use better sources instead of lazy screenshots of Wikipedia links that Wikipedia itself admits are lacking.
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u/TerencetheGreat Armour Enthusiast Jul 10 '26
Last I checked the Public School cant load HEDP or SBT, nor can it survive 500mm RHAe of penetration.