Out of Mothballs: Obsolescent Weaponry on the T2k Battlefield

[Raellus]

TIL that Romania had 47 SU-100 self-propelled tank destroyers in reserve as of 2016!

Does anyone know if the SU-100 is stat'ed in any T2k book (any version)

What other older weapon systems would you expect to see brought out of retirement and encountered on the battlefield c.2000

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[Vespers War]

All of these are caveated with "last I heard," and may be out of date.

Cuba and North Korea still had T-34 tanks in service, and Vietnam was still using them as training vehicles.

Meanwhile Paraguay has 3 Shermans with diesel engines and the 105mm gun from the AMX-13, along with roughly a dozen Stuarts.

The Kostiantynivka incident suggests some of the Iosif Stalin tanks could be reactivated.

Taiwan has M41 Walker Bulldogs and M48 Pattons (I believe in reserve).

[kato13]

TIL that Romania had 47 SU-100 self-propelled tank destroyers in reserve as of 2016!

Does anyone know if the SU-100 is stat'ed in any T2k book (any version)

What other older weapon systems would you expect to see brought out of retirement and encountered on the battlefield c.2000

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You doubted that Paul has it somewhere. Tisk tisk.

http://www.pmulcahy.com/PDFs/Twilight_2000_WWII.pdf

Page 95

[shrike6]

Paul has it on his main pages as well. http://www.pmulcahy.com/sp_guns/russian_sp_guns.htm scroll to the bottom.

[Raellus]

You doubted that Paul has it somewhere. Tisk tisk.

Not for a second. Of course Paul has it! I just wondered if the SU-100 made it into any of the books. I checked the v1 Soviet Vehicle Guide before I posted and it does not include the SU-100.

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[Matt Wiser]

Don't forget the Littlefield Armor Collection. In T2K that would be very valuable to MilGov in California, and they would "appropriate" it. Even if it means giving Mr. Littlefield a field commission as a Major or Lt. Colonel.

[Raellus]

Don't forget the Littlefield Armor Collection. In T2K that would be very valuable to MilGov in California, and they would "appropriate" it. Even if it means giving Mr. Littlefield a field commission as a Major or Lt. Colonel.

Thanks for the reminder. We have a couple of threads here somewhere dedicated to discussion of the Littlefield Collection, and other private repositories of working AFVs.

I think the Pancerovka P-27 (a Czechoslovakian version of the RPG-2 with a larger warhead) would have been dusted off for use during the Twilight War.

http://tonnel-ufo-english.tk/weapon/grenade-pancerovka-p-27.php

Of course, it's already stat'ed on Paul's Website.

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[CDAT]

...
What other older weapon systems would you expect to see brought out of retirement and encountered on the battlefield c.2000

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Just about every US Army base I have ever been to has at least some military museum, how easy to reactivate them I do not know, I do know at Redstone when we were out in the training area one of my guys found a old M60 and was able to get it to start (did not run long or well). Also in 2003 when we were in Iraq M4A3 (76) were found (at least one that I personally laid eyes on) with spare pars and ammo (all from WWII I am guessing, so no idea what shape it was in).

[Ursus Maior]

Yugoslavian successor states and their predecessor militias pulled out M36 tank destroyers out of depots and arsenals. They were used by Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians plus Serbs, though I don't know if references to "Serbia" here mean Serbs in Bosnia or pre-dominantly Serbian units of the Yugoslavian state. Technically, Serbia only came into existence again as a separate state in 2006, when Macedonia left Yugoslavia (the only peaceful split from that state) and only Serbia remained as part of Yugoslavia, renaming the state subsequently.

The T-34 was also used by Bosnians in the Yugoslav Wars and is still in use in African nations, as well as probably in Cuba and North Korea. There were various refurbishing programs to the T-34 line after the war, including new engines, but also introducing night driving equipment, additional fuel, and other modernization. These might still have certain battlefield value late in war and certainly in 2000, when essentially every steel-plated vehicle is king, since by that time we're talking Libyan / Syrian Civil War style warfare and fuel is as much a problem as are actual vehicles.

[.45cultist]

Alabama Arsenal stores everything including vehicles. WW2 and Vietnam reenactors acting as militia are other sources.

[Olefin]

The 1st US Volunteer Mechanized Battalion is in Kenya using a variety of WWII and early Cold War equipment - i.e. Stuart and Sherman and M47 tanks, Ferrets and Greyhound AC

Mexico and Brazil were both operating Stuart tanks (the ones in Brazil were extensively upgraded - the X1A1 and the X1A2) during the timeline and there were still Greyhound Armored Cars operated by several countries if I remember right

Israel still had upgraded Sherman tanks in its inventory and African nations were still operating T-34's

Paraguay had Stuart tanks in service as late as 2014

In 2018, there were multiple countries that maintained T-34s in the inventories of their national armed forces: Cuba, Yemen, the Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.

[.45cultist]

Also, there's the Cactus Air Force and it's WW2 aircraft.

[Vespers War]

On the East Coast there's the AAF Tank Museum in Danville, VA (on the North Carolina border). The collection there includes:

US armored vehicles:
M1917, M4A3E8 Sherman Bulldozer, M5A1 Stuart, M18 Hellcat, M47 Patton, M48A5 Patton, M103, M41A3 Walker Bulldog, M60, M60A2, M60A3

German PzKpfw IV Ausf H, Soviet T-34/85, Iraqi T-54 and T-72

A half-dozen APCs and their derivatives (M59, M75, M113, M114, M163, M901)

Some of the vehicles (I don't know which, but posts from people who have been there say "most of them") are in running condition and are driven on demonstration days. It wouldn't have been as large in the Twilight War, since the original museum was in Mattituck, NY, and much smaller; it moved to Virginia in 2003 (according to a news article, the move consisted of 2,597 tons of stuff). For someone running a later timeline, though, that could be a treasure trove of materiel.

[Raellus]

Redirect

To clarify the OP, I was addressing the deployment of relatively large stocks of mothballed weaponry, not so much one-offs like museum collections. The main issue that I see with the latter is a lack of spare parts and expertise re operation, maintenance, and upkeep. If anyone would like to discuss museum exhibits returning to combat, here are a couple of threads that address that topic specifically:

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=4600&highlight=littlefield

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=4604&highlight=littlefield

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[Olefin]

in the 90's the US had a lot of older M60 and M48 tanks still in storage as well as close to 500 M47 tanks in Italy in storage - they had spare parts and ammo and were ready to rock

the Soviets/Russians had close to a 1000 T-10A/M tanks in reserve still in 1996 as well as 1400 plus T-34 variants that were being used for driver training and could have been brought back

In both cases there (at least at first) would have been plenty of ammo and spare parts in stock - the question is how long would that last - the Soviets were still making ammo for the T-34 if I remember right until late in the 1980's

As for the M60 - there was a GAO report in the mid-90's about how enough ammo had been produced for the M60A2 that it could have kept the ones that were still in existence supplied with ammo for literally decades