Ad Hoc AFVs

[Raellus]

You touched on it there, but it should probably be remembered that Russian long-term storage is not the same as Sierra long-term storage, where the vehicles are sitting in an arid environment and not subject to multiple deep freezing cycles per year, alternately covered in snow and partially flooded, and without even occasional pulls for parts checks. Most of the strategic vehicle reserve of Russia is literally rotting and rusting where it sits in various depots.

That is, there's a good chance there's more than the autoloaders wrong with a lot of these vehicles.

Those are all good points and I don't disagree with you. One slight mitigating factor regarding Soviet deep storage is that, in the T2kU, a lot of those AFVs aren't going to have been in storage quite as long as the Russian tanks that we're talking about now (i.e. 30 years for the older models then, as opposed to 50 now).

A quick note about desert storage (I live near Tucson, AZ)- the dry heat kills plastic and rubber. The former literally crumbles to dust after a few months exposed to sunlight and heat.

@Vespers: Thanks for the stats. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Russians are going to run out of "meat" nearly as fast as they're running out of armor...

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[HaplessOperator]

I aggressively agree with you as well!

Those are all good points and I don't disagree with you. One slight mitigating factor regarding Soviet deep storage is that, in the T2kU, a lot of those AFVs aren't going to have been in storage quite as long as the Russian tanks that we're talking about now (i.e. 30 years for the older models then, as opposed to 50 now).

A quick note about desert storage (I live near Tucson, AZ)- the dry heat kills plastic and rubber. The former literally crumbles to dust after a few months exposed to sunlight and heat.

@Vespers: Thanks for the stats. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Russians are going to run out of "meat" nearly as fast as they're running out of armor...

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I think our general bank on that was that it's easier (and cheaper) to replace exterior seals and do an engine pull than it is to rehabilitate flooding, deep snow cover, freezing cycles on exterior hardware, and waterlogged electronics, and that it's far simpler to manufacture and rehabilitate such replacement components if push came to shove.

I find it far more interesting that these depletion levels are coming from engaging a single country on their border under conditions generously described as air parity, with no NATO involvement, and with the thing starting off with some of the most modern ground branch equipment they had in stock, thrown against anti-armor systems that was new 25-30 years ago.

I mean, BMPs weren't any tougher 30 years ago than they are now, and you can still kill them with platforms throwing 40mm grenades or .50AP and SLAP. Hell, the Ukes logged a T-80U kill with a Carl Gustav, and volleyed AT-4 hits seem just as effective on the homegrown stuff as the "monkey models."

Given what we've seen of their hardware on live fire ranges, I think it's a lot more likely that we spent 75 years doing what we do best: overestimating our enemy and assuming the worst to ensure overmatch. We saw more or less the same thing in Chechnya; the only real success they managed was when they massed DIVARTY or corps-level artillery assets and delete entire settlements and called it square. First sign of significant, organized resistance using even equivalent hardware, and they melt about as quickly as the Republican Guard did.

Their problems (hardware and wetware both) seem to stem much further back than the Cold War ending with the collapse, and reached far deeper than poor warehousing of vehicle stocks; Cockburn had a fairly insightful look into this with The Threat: Inside The Soviet Military Machine as far back as 1985.

I get the feeling that thousands of Leopards, Challengers, Abrams, F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s wouldn't exactly help their situation much even if you were to somehow double the size of their military; you'd just harvest more meat, and faster.

[Raellus]

I think our general bank on that was that it's easier (and cheaper) to replace exterior seals and do an engine pull than it is to rehabilitate flooding, deep snow cover, freezing cycles on exterior hardware, and waterlogged electronics, and that it's far simpler to manufacture and rehabilitate such replacement components if push came to shove.

I agree. Since we're drifting a bit from the OP of this thread, I've replied to the rest of your post over here:

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpp=97545#post97545

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[Vespers War]

Those are all good points and I don't disagree with you. One slight mitigating factor regarding Soviet deep storage is that, in the T2kU, a lot of those AFVs aren't going to have been in storage quite as long as the Russian tanks that we're talking about now (i.e. 30 years for the older models then, as opposed to 50 now).

A quick note about desert storage (I live near Tucson, AZ)- the dry heat kills plastic and rubber. The former literally crumbles to dust after a few months exposed to sunlight and heat.

@Vespers: Thanks for the stats. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Russians are going to run out of "meat" nearly as fast as they're running out of armor...

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A lot of the tanks likely won't have been in storage at all in the GDW-era T2K timelines, since the Soviet Union declared 41,580 tanks in the region covered by the CFE Treaty, and the arms ceiling was 16,500 tanks in active service (with that covering the entire Warsaw Pact, and its allocation was divvied up among its members after that group broke up).

The reason so many of those large tank depots are in the Asian part of Russia is because the CFE Treaty didn't cover equipment east of the Urals, so instead of destroying equipment to the extent NATO did, they just shipped it east. I imagine the plan was to get it out there and then figure out what to do with it, but they never really came up with good ideas of how to make use of the tanks, so they mostly just sat there and rusted.

Some of those tanks did end up scrapped later, but moving ~25,000 tanks east to technically comply with the treaty explains a lot of the background to how Russia wound up with ~30,000 tanks in storage.

[ChalkLine]

The Russians are very concerned about the Baltics and Poland trying something at Kaliningrad where NATO has been conducting very pugnacious 'invasion exercises' for well over a decade. Ukraine is neither a real tank war or a manoeuvre threat, the Russians are 'demilitarising' the place as they say; grinding the army down even though the forces consist largely of conscripted - often forcibly - East Ukrainians. They need to be able to have T-72s and similar to quickly get into Kaliningrad.

NATO is a significant threat and has been prowling around Belarus & Kaliningrad for some time, that's where Russia sees the real threat although the peacekeepers in Moldova are extremely exposed. Regime change efforts are underway in Georgia again and Russia is also worried that there may be fighting there again, especially as how they stupidly fell into the trap of trying the same 'display of force' strategy in Ukraine as they did in Georgia and NATO watched and learned. Really, it was gobsmackingly dumb anyway because it got a bunch of kids and Chechens killed in Chechnya when Yeltsin did it. You'd think they'd avoid doing anything Yeltsin did.

[Raellus]

T-62 APCs

Russian APCs based on T-62 chassis are appearing in Ukraine.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/01/06/the-russians-made-armored-personnel-carriers-out-of-old-t-62-tanks-and-sent-them-to-blown-up-by-ukrainian-drones/

I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really think that this sort of ad-hoc vehicle would be fairly commonplace in the T2kU after the nuclear exchanges. Obviously, if the user has the ability to repair or replace an MBT turret, that would be the first option. But without proper parts or repair facilities, the next best option would be a conversion similar to the ones appearing on both sides of the fighting in Ukraine.

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[Raellus]

BMP-55 Spotted in the Wild

This article does a good job synthesizing info about the conversion of MBT hulls to heavy APCs.

https://www.twz.com/land/extremely-rare-ukrainian-heavy-infantry-fighting-vehicle-appears-on-battlefield

I'm being a broken record here, but I think that these sorts of MBT-to-APC conversions would be fairly commonplace in the T2kU.

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[Tegyrius]

I'm being a broken record here, but I think that these sorts of MBT-to-APC conversions would be fairly commonplace in the T2kU.

Setting aside the technical (tee hee) challenges of conversion and the logistical headaches of keeping them running... yes. They're thematic as all hell. In a corner of the setting without major combatant remnants, a village with a decapitated but driveable T-55 has a platform that's effectively impervious to raiders' and neighbors' small arms.

OTOH, a marauder group with such a vehicle could make a good, but not overwhelming, challenge for a PC team that's light on anti-armor.

- C.