I think you'd be better off just using the co-ax MG, and/or pointing the 37mm at your enemy. After all, they don't KNOW you don't have any shells or canister for it....

You know, as intresting as it is to think about getting your hands on an old tank or armored car, there really are not that many available that are in good enough condition to rebuild. I took the time this afternoon to look over a tank on display at Camp Shelby with a buddy of mine and we can confirm that not only was the barrel demilled and the breech missing, there was not even an engine pack in the vehicle, the fire control equipment had been removed and there wasn't an intact gauge in the tank. This one would certainly require the services of Anniston Depot to get it into any kind of order.

I've been rereading O'Jerusalem and there is a section on how the Israelis rebuilt trucks into ad-hoc armored cars. The would sandwich boiler plate on the hood, cab, and body, stuffing the space in between with rubber, cement, gravel and a variety of other fillings. It was crude, it couldn't stop antitank rounds, but it did stop fragments and .30 caliber rounds. Just a random thought, but would it not be possible that this sort of home-built be a lot more common?

Here's another thought - say you do get your hands on a few 50+ year old armoured vehicles and do manage to get them running again.

Where is the average township/tin pot dictator/etc going to get the heavy weaponry to put in it? At best they're likely to have little mroe than a few assault rifles to stiffen the hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols arming much of their force.

How many police departments have a .50 call machinegun, 20mm autocanon or even 60mm mortar in their armoury? How many survivalist groups would have gotten away with acquiring anything heavy, or if they did, sufficient ammunition to train with, let alone conduct any sort of operation?

To my mind, APCs whether ex military or jerrybuilt will be far more useful than an old tank.

While I agree that a tank has limited utility for a community compared to an armoured truck or a proper APC and getting ammo for them would be pretty much impossible, there are some places in the US where heavier weapons are allowed to be owned by civilians.
For example although I don't know what state it is, you can own 40mm grenade launchers and also recoiless rifles but you cannot get explosive ammo for them (only smoke, if I remember the article correctly).
In Texas they have a collector's club for flamethrowers... should give the Mexican invasion something to think about, dozens of angry Texans wielding flamethrowers :D

+1 on both points. My department has some select fire small arms in service with the SWAT team, but nothing heavier than 5.56mm, and caliber footprint maxes out at a .50 cal sniper rifle or two and some 37mm less lethal launchers (again, all belonging to SWAT -- patrol officers are authorized shotguns and semi-only AR-15s and similar). And while we do have a decent stockpile of ammunition, it's not adequate for any sort of sustained operations. I don't think any larger departments would be able to trot out much more military weaponry -- liability issues completely preclude anyone deploying a machine gun or mortar for law enforcement purposes.

Survivalists -- meh, though if the Cold War had kept going into the mid 90s and there was a tensing run up to world war when the Sino-Soviet war kicked off, I could see that school of thought having broader appeal and more adherents than it did in the real world (the New America storyline implies survivalism was a lot more popular in th the T2K US than in the real world). Heavy weapons for most of those people would be right out, though I did have an Ops NCO who swore that in the late 80s when his ODA was going some training in Idaho they were in ear shot of the sort of place usually referred to by the press as a "compound" and heard what was unmistakably someone putting rounds through an M60 machine gun.

:schuss:

Now why would dozens of Texans wielding flamethrowers be scary? It's the tens of thousands of Texans armed with hunting rifles in every caliber known to man that would scare me!!

40mm launchers aren't too exotic (though certainly a kind of fringe portion of the US firearms market) and you can actually even legally possess HE ammo for them. The catch is that each individual round is a controlled item and subject to a federal $200 tax stamp and BATFE approval. Submitting paperwork for a pallet of 40mm HEDP ammo (if anyone was willing to sell that quantity to a private citizen in the first place) would definitely put someone on the radar in a big way with federal authorities.

In otherwords, technically possible, but exceptionally unlikely anyone would just happen to have any laying about....

I want to say there might be a way around the one round one license thing, but I am not sure. Only reason I say that is back when I lived in Colorado I knew two -not one, two- guys with legal Mk19's, and they never appeared to lack for ammo.

They had them for hunting squirrels right?

No, you rear-mount them and use them to hunt tailgaters.

I thought that's what flamethrowers, mine layers and spike droppers are for?
Yes, I'm channelling Car Wars at the moment. :p

Far out. The US of A never ceases to amaze me.

There's a place up in Tennessee that has a annual full-auto shoot-off. The name of the town escapes me at the moment as I have not yet had my morning caffine fix, but its three days of just about every automatic weapon that has ever been produced...and all are Class Three legal! And seeing some 200 weapons on the firing line at the same time is damnded impressive!

IIRC, Knob Creek. They had a Bofors L/60 there last year.

Yeah, its Knob Creek;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob_Creek_Gun_Range

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31vm3-BQRJU

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/877252...xplosions_mus/

I'd love to get a trip there sometime, looks lke great craic. Unfortunately I live in a country where its nigh on impossible to get a firearms license of any sort :(

not to mention the 5.56mm/7.62mm and .50-caliber versions of the Minigun...

hmmmmmmm .50-caliber minigun.....just picture how much damage you could do at rush hour with one of those in the bed of your pickup!

You know it was one of the things that the guys at GDW did get right, in that they stated that many of the old gun ADA was now being used effectively against ground target since there was very little need of it to be used to attempt to shoot down the various misc. aircraft that menace the air before.

Tell me about it!

In Vietnam, the ADA battalions had a .50-caliber battery attached to them, the TO&E provide for 25 M-60 mgs and 24 Quad .50-calibers, picture a human-wave assault going into something like that!!!!

As long as I am not a member of the human-wave assault, it wouldn't be pretty.

The guy down the road from me has 2 WW 2 tanks an M-3 and an M-5 and a half track to boot.

That's cool...there was a guy in Virginia who was offering his M-41 Walker Bulldog for sale for $90,000...poor guy had to get rid of the tank due to his divorce...

What kind of inhuman monster makes a man give up his tank!!!!!;)

Too bad I didn't have the $90,000!!!:(