Canon Germany to RDF tank transfer

[kato13]

The man has splendid attention to detail and a gratifying lack of rubbing-your-nose-in-it.

Thank you for the complement.

I hope my BINGO was not read that way. It was a mix of my own excitement and to attract the attention of anyone who read my original post but might miss the edit.

Honestly I remember being annoyed with the AFV/MBT thing way back when.

[95th Rifleman]

If GW1 (or 2 depending on your point of view) fits into Canon then if the Saudis did provide those tanks they may well have been M60A3s and M1A2s. Although (unless there's a vehicle-specific breakdown!) M60A3s are far more likely...

as much as I hate to lean on Wackypedia for stuff, this is to my knowledge pretty accurate:

The armys main equipment consists of a combination of French- and U.S.-made armored vehicles: 315 M1A2 Abrams, 290 AMX30, and 450 M60A3 main battle tanks; 300 reconnaissance vehicles; 570+ AMX10P and 400 M2 Bradley armored infantry fighting vehicles; 3,000+ M113 and 100 Al-Fahd armored personnel carriers, produced in Saudi Arabia; 200+ towed artillery pieces; 110 self-propelled artillery pieces; 60 multiple rocket launchers; 400 mortars; 10 surface-to-surface missiles; about 2,000 antitank guided weapons; about 200 rocket launchers; 450 recoilless launchers; 12 attack helicopters; 50+ transport helicopters; and 1,000 surface-to-air missiles.[3] In 2011, the Saudi-Arabian army has furthermore ordered 200+ German Leopard 2A7+ main battle tanks to extend their fleet.

The Saudis are, as of 2012 in our reality literally drowning in armor. Even in the T2k setting I'd wager they could shave off some wallowed out M60s and M113s to their US friends.

Another thing I'm thinking about is that the Saudis (and most of the southern, pro-west arab states) all relied heavily on the Chieften before some bought the Abrahms as a replacement.

That means allot of mothballed Chieftens just waiting to be sent, under the table, to the RDF.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

You know, I don't know the man personally but Frank Frey is a member of an old gaming club I used to be affiliated with: HMGS-South. You might be able to get ahold of him on www.hmgs-south.com through the forums there.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Another thing I'm thinking about is that the Saudis (and most of the southern, pro-west arab states) all relied heavily on the Chieften before some bought the Abrahms as a replacement.

That means allot of mothballed Chieftens just waiting to be sent, under the table, to the RDF.

Ooooh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah! Yankee-driven Chieftains for everyone!

SCENE: US Armor cantonment, outside Basra, Iraq

"Hey welcome to the 24th sir. This is our track, we call her 'Qom-Guzzler', if uh you'll pardon the joke. Anyhow, I hope it doesn't weird you out driving a Brit tank like the Chieftain, but she's a good track and - "

"Son, I left Poland last month where my last three 'tanks' were a Wartburg with an RPK on a sponson where the passenger door used to be, A BMP-1, and a T55 with no main gun and a MILAN launcher tripod tack welded to the turret roof. Trust me when I say this is the least weird vehicle I've commanded since 1998."

[Olefin]

Chieftain is a pretty good tank too especially since a lot of the tanks the Russians and the Tudeh have are T-55's. And the Saudis werent stingy with their ammo purchases either - so there should be plenty to go around.

[Tegyrius]

Hm. In lieu of mothballed older designs, would the Saudis have been able to provide repair assets to the RDF that were sufficient to refurbish some less-than-catastrophically-killed vehicles Nothing would be Anniston-fresh, but with a turret here and a power pack there...

- C.

[Olefin]

probably depends on two things - how catastrophic and can they even get to the tanks

i.e. a tank killed in areas the Soviets are controlling is pretty much gone

plus if you read the original rules any vehicle left out in the open gets stripped pretty fast to nothing - probably anything wrecked earlier and recoverable was stripped for spare parts and anything else they could find (hmm wonder how many guns trucks you can armor up with the side skirts off an M1)

[Webstral]

Another possibility for the increase in tank strength in CENTCOM is the opening of a fabrication center in Iran that can supply some of the most needed parts faster than those parts are consumed. Im not a tanker, so I dont know which parts wear out the quickest (other than the tracks. Tanks eat up tracks like nobodys business). However, even a modest facility in-theater can widen the bottleneck created by a lack of the most-needed parts and bring more of a specific type of tank back into operation.

A few things would be required to fabricate tank parts on anything like an assembly line basis. CENTCOM would need a facility. An unused large structure should not be hard to find. The shop would need power. We know theres some oil coming out of the wells in the region, so diesel generators should work fine. Machine tools and some skilled labor are also necessary. We know that Iran has both. Whether both are available in the areas controlled by the US is an unknown; however, pro-Western Iranians, of which there are more than a few, probably have fled into southern Iran by 2000. The right metals are also a necessity. I know next to nothing about metallurgy, so I cant say how hard it would be to acquire the requisite metals and render them into the appropriate condition for working with machine tools. That much said, if fabricating engine parts for M1A1 is a genuine priority for CENTCOM, then the resources seem to be available locally.

[kato13]

Whoops sorry there Kato

ok thats three hits for me on the body location of your choice

No problem it made me laugh.

As far as kings ransom I KNEW that I had read something where MBT was clearly substituted with AFV. It annoyed me then and it annoys me now.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Another possibility for the increase in tank strength in CENTCOM is the opening of a fabrication center in Iran that can supply some of the most needed parts faster than those parts are consumed. Im not a tanker, so I dont know which parts wear out the quickest (other than the tracks. Tanks eat up tracks like nobodys business). However, even a modest facility in-theater can widen the bottleneck created by a lack of the most-needed parts and bring more of a specific type of tank back into operation.

A few things would be required to fabricate tank parts on anything like an assembly line basis. CENTCOM would need a facility. An unused large structure should not be hard to find. The shop would need power. We know theres some oil coming out of the wells in the region, so diesel generators should work fine. Machine tools and some skilled labor are also necessary. We know that Iran has both. Whether both are available in the areas controlled by the US is an unknown; however, pro-Western Iranians, of which there are more than a few, probably have fled into southern Iran by 2000. The right metals are also a necessity. I know next to nothing about metallurgy, so I cant say how hard it would be to acquire the requisite metals and render them into the appropriate condition for working with machine tools. That much said, if fabricating engine parts for M1A1 is a genuine priority for CENTCOM, then the resources seem to be available locally.

Their politics aside, the Iranians have since 1980 essentially lived Twilight:2000 in terms of military hardware. They got little shipments trickled in (some, sadly, from the US), they have had to adapt and improvise, and while they've gotten a LOT from the Soviets for handing over an F14 and a few Phoenix missiles, that's not enough to last them through 30+ years. They got a small influx of ex-Iraqi planes, and they've gone to home-grown APCs and IFVs.

If nothing else you could use that as a sort of inspirational spark for what the Iranians can do when motivated. With some US mechanics behind them, perhaps the "Zulfiqar-1" could be shoehorned in limited numbers into T2k...non-canon, of course, but still...

[Olefin]

Armor and the guns tubes would be the killer Webstral - armor on a tank only comes from certain specialized mills - like the one in Israel that I read got nuked to deny it to the Israelis. Ditto for gun tubes.

so while they might be able to make tracks or possibly engine parts, the armor and the main guns are goign to stop them cold.

Now saying that - it takes a lot less space to ship 35 gun tubes to Saudi Arabia than it does to ship 35 full tanks.

And keep in mind - you may be lookign at as many as 50 tanks due to replacing combat losses that occured from June 2000 to Jan 2001 to end up with a net increase of 35 tanks

[Webstral]

No problem it made me laugh.

As far as kings ransom I KNEW that I had read something where MBT was clearly substituted with AFV. It annoyed me then and it annoys me now.

Well, good on you for differentiating between what you like and what is in print.

[95th Rifleman]

Ooooh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah! Yankee-driven Chieftains for everyone!

SCENE: US Armor cantonment, outside Basra, Iraq

"Hey welcome to the 24th sir. This is our track, we call her 'Qom-Guzzler', if uh you'll pardon the joke. Anyhow, I hope it doesn't weird you out driving a Brit tank like the Chieftain, but she's a good track and - "

"Son, I left Poland last month where my last three 'tanks' were a Wartburg with an RPK on a sponson where the passenger door used to be, A BMP-1, and a T55 with no main gun and a MILAN launcher tripod tack welded to the turret roof. Trust me when I say this is the least weird vehicle I've commanded since 1998."

You sir, just made my day with that image.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

probably depends on two things - how catastrophic and can they even get to the tanks

i.e. a tank killed in areas the Soviets are controlling is pretty much gone

plus if you read the original rules any vehicle left out in the open gets stripped pretty fast to nothing - probably anything wrecked earlier and recoverable was stripped for spare parts and anything else they could find (hmm wonder how many guns trucks you can armor up with the side skirts off an M1)

Good point; also note that if the Saudis have lend/leased any M88s to US forces in the area even a handful of those could slightly ameliorate the "leave to be stripped" situation.

[95th Rifleman]

Armor and the guns tubes would be the killer Webstral - armor on a tank only comes from certain specialized mills - like the one in Israel that I read got nuked to deny it to the Israelis. Ditto for gun tubes.

so while they might be able to make tracks or possibly engine parts, the armor and the main guns are goign to stop them cold.

Now saying that - it takes a lot less space to ship 35 gun tubes to Saudi Arabia than it does to ship 35 full tanks.

And keep in mind - you may be lookign at as many as 50 tanks due to replacing combat losses that occured from June 2000 to Jan 2001 to end up with a net increase of 35 tanks

Depends if you are willing to downgrade the armour. The chobham on an M1 or Chally is going to be impossible to produce. However it would be possible to produce more conventional armmour.