*Post*-TDM armor production.

[Legbreaker]

It's worth noting the books only detail those nuclear targets which received 250 kilotonnes or more. This essentially rules out almost every sub launched missile and possibly even aircraft delivered weapons as well.

So it's very possible, even probable that what is shown on the maps and in the books is just a small percentage of actual strikes.

[Cpl. Kalkwarf]

Personally I prefer the Saladin and Scimitar turrets as fitted to some M113s here in Australia. How can you go wrong with a 76mm cannon on an APC

One of my Favorite versions of the M113

[Cpl. Kalkwarf]

One other Possibility is that former truck or automotive plants and facility's could/ would be turned into some sort of production. Granted they may not be the latest and greatest of vehicles, but light afvs are better then no afvs.

Some food for though. Think about how little time it took for the US to tool up for WW2. Say with the disruption of the Nukes, even if it would double or triple. Eventually say like early 2001 its possible that there may be something like Improved Sherman's, Half-tracks, trucks and Prop-driven aircraft being produced.

We were really not much of an Industrial power house at the start of WW2. Get the steel plants and the railroads running again. Dedicate the smaller and older refineries to the wartime production (the ones that were not nuked- yes there are some that people are generally unaware of, one is/was near Casper Wyoming). Jobs would be had. Food could be shipped from the farms to the population centers by trains.

[Legbreaker]

The US had 2-3 years of supplying the British before they became embroiled in the war themselves. Plenty of time to ramp up production of the comparatively primitive designs of the time. Even compared against the contemporary German designs, the Sherman for example was barely adequate and basic.

It would be interesting to see how they may have faired if they'd had a cold start and were trying to produce complex machines such as the Tiger or Panther. Probably better than Germany did, but definitely not as well as IRL.

[Rainbow Six]

Here are TACOM Major Plants

Warren, MI
Red River, TX
Rock Island, IL
Anniston, AL
Watervliet, NY
Sierra, CA

If I recall correctly someone did some homebrew stuff on Anniston years ago...from what I remember it was a pretty good write up. It might still be on the net somewhere, but if it is my google fu isn't up to finding it....

[Rockwolf66]

Has anyone else read up on the Armed and Armored Pickup trucks that Los Zetas are useing down in Mexico's drug wars

Los Monsturos or something like that the news is calling them. The lattest one found is a modified Ford Pickup that can get up to 70mph and is resistant to most mexican small arms. Previous one found could get up to 40 and I've seen a 3rd that looked like a modified Garbage truck or some other vehicle of that size.

At one time I though it was overkill that the El Paso PD had a SAW in it's SWAT inventory...Now I hope they have a Ma Duce that they can fit onto a Bearcat.

[95th Rifleman]

Personally I prefer the Saladin and Scimitar turrets as fitted to some M113s here in Australia. How can you go wrong with a 76mm cannon on an APC

We did the same thing with the FV432 back in the day, slapped a 30mm cannon turret on top.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

We did the same thing with the FV432 back in the day, slapped a 30mm cannon turret on top.

[James Langham]

Fv432 with 30mm

These were issued to the British part of the Berlin Brigade. In real life they have now been sold off and are used for vehicle paintball - there is an article somewhere on the BBC News site.

[dragoon500ly]

You know, for an excellent source of home built armored vehicles that worked, you may want to reference the 1948 Israeli-Arab War.

Faced with an inability to acquire modern armor (although the Israelis did steal a Comet tank and several Daimler armored cars), most of what they used were standard trucks fitted with sandwich armor. Faced with a shortage of decent armor plate, the Israelis used boiler plate welded to the frame of the vehicle, then then welded another set of boiler plate 2-3 inches out and filled the space with a wide variety of material, everything from gravel to rubber to concrete to wood to tile. It was crude, anything larger than small arms would penetrate, but since most of the Arabs had few, if any, antitank weapons, it worked.

As the war progressed, it would be very likely that the various commanders would horde their remaining stocks of ATGMs for real emergencies. So I can see the possibility of ad hoc sandwich armored vehicles returning.....

[Rockwolf66]

You know, for an excellent source of home built armored vehicles that worked, you may want to reference the 1948 Israeli-Arab War.

Faced with an inability to acquire modern armor (although the Israelis did steal a Comet tank and several Daimler armored cars), most of what they used were standard trucks fitted with sandwich armor. Faced with a shortage of decent armor plate, the Israelis used boiler plate welded to the frame of the vehicle, then then welded another set of boiler plate 2-3 inches out and filled the space with a wide variety of material, everything from gravel to rubber to concrete to wood to tile. It was crude, anything larger than small arms would penetrate, but since most of the Arabs had few, if any, antitank weapons, it worked.

As the war progressed, it would be very likely that the various commanders would horde their remaining stocks of ATGMs for real emergencies. So I can see the possibility of ad hoc sandwich armored vehicles returning.....

Something like This

Yeah the drug gangs of northern Mexico are building armored combat vehicles.

[schnickelfritz]

It's worth noting the books only detail those nuclear targets which received 250 kilotonnes or more. This essentially rules out almost every sub launched missile and possibly even aircraft delivered weapons as well.

So it's very possible, even probable that what is shown on the maps and in the books is just a small percentage of actual strikes.

I agree that it seems against basic military common sense not to attack the TACOM sites. They most likely were on the target list. Unfortunately, their destruction or survival was never discussed except for the Lima Tank Plant in Challenge Magazine, which survived due to a near miss.

My argument is that by the post-TDM period, the delivery methods may have been destroyed, the number of warheads may have dropped due to losses necessitating their targeting having been changed, or that those in the USSR giving the word may have either had tired of the destruction or been incapacitated themselves, all through a variety of ways.

It could be as simple as a Frigate in the Gulf making a lucky discovery of a SLCM carrying Victor III with the weapons to neutralize Anniston (and/or Rock Island) and putting it on the bottom with a pair of Mark 48's in a chance encounter.

My point is that in the canon material, except for Lima, it isn't stated either way, on the hit lists or in any narrative material that I've ever seen, and I remember ordering Howling Wilderness new from the local comic shop....and being rather disappointed with what I got. Does it really imbalance your average T2K campaign to have them partially/completely intact I really can't see how. Even if intact, the federal covernment won't have the energy, raw materials, or bodies to run the plants for years to come. They will, however, be rather instrumental in rebuilding the US military.

[TrailerParkJawa]

I alwasy had a more literal interpetation of the target list for the USA proper. I do remember that only attacks of a certain size where listed but ran on the assumption that tonnages less than 250k were reserved for battlefields. Meaning most of them were smaller tacticals.

The plant in San Jose most certainly could be hit by a MIRV from the Benecia attacks but in my mind and the material I created it was just the refineries that were hit.

I had mulled around the idea of a Soviet submarine attackign the plant with a conventional cruise missiles. Hit the plant at lunch time or a shift change and you'd kill a lot of employees and do some good damage. Although in none of the source material did I ever follow up with the idea.

My guess is the factory was actually a primary target rather than the city itself. Any damage to the city would probably be either a byproduct of the attack on the M113 factory, from another warhead in the MIRV, or both.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Wow, this thread is still going in fits and starts (rather like post TDM armor production would! ha!)

Interesting to note that AAI is located in Hunt Valley, MD. AAI is the primary producer of the RDF/LT (aka "LAV-75"). If Baltimore survived there's a chance some LAV75s could still be rolled out with remaining parts (I'm sure like all defense contracting, sub-assemblies were spread out to hell and gone).

Of course DC is a mere 60 miles away, that could make things impossible.

The LAV family is primarily manufactured at GDLS-Canada; dunno how bad Canada got pasted, nor where the factory for that would have been.

FMC is in Santa Clara so...yeah, no more M113s or Bradleys. Santa Clara is just south of the Bay and everything up that way gets hit pretty bad.

I think for the first 25 or 30 years after the war the best bet would be to keep what you have running, simplify, and when you absolutely positively need a "new" vehicle you put forth a massive effort to cobble one together out of spares.

(Of course my own non-canon Coming Home scenario would see a bunch of AFVs being taken back home - still a bunch left in Germany, too, mind.)