Aircraft/Armor Surplus Storage
 

So I have been looking through alot of Chico's stuff and some other posts here to find we store 1000's of older vehicles. I knew we did it, just not to that numbers I found. :(

Where the hell do they store 409 AH-1F's or 1500 M551's? :)

Helos stored outside would have covers over engine inlets and spraylat everywhere else. Fuel and hydraulic fluid would be completely drained as well. Inside they'd still be drained of fuel and fluids but likely not covered in spraylat.

Vehicles would just be parked. There's 2000 M1 tanks stored thusly in California (new builds, too; I guess the Army decided it was cheaper to keep acquiring them than to terminate the contract, despite not having the personnel, TOE or missions for them...)

Ok so lets assume some of these newer vehicles would be sent overseas as replacements, I doubt they would WANT to sent 8000 M113's to mainline troops in Europe unless they HAD to. So where do you store them?

Any suggestions, real or storyline driven are welcome. :)

Well...any aircraft would be stored in hardened air shelters. Given that helos can be put on roller-wheels to move them in and out of storage, and an unarmed AH-1 series bird has a really narrow cross section, you could probably pack quite a few inside an HAS. So basically anywhere there was a surviving air shelter is where you could keep them. Otherwise, a warehouse, etc. would do.

Same goes for armored vehicles: a warehouse, etc. would suffice. Anywhere you could string concertina wire and set up defensive points, and be assured of little or no observation by enemy troops would do the trick for a "vehicle depot". I'm not sure what the weight considerations would be but a multi-storey parking garage might do: Bremen, for example, was missed in the nuclear strikes of '97 (and earlier) and may well have some civilian parking garages that would suffice for lighter armored vehicles. Don't know that I'd stick a bunch of Leo-IIIs on the top deck of one of those though...

There are a few places you would store aircraft and AFV's

For Aircraft you have

Kingman Airport, Kingman, Arizona
Phoenix Goodyear Airport, Goodyear, Arizona
Pinal Airpark, Marana, Arizona
309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona
Southern California Logistics Airport, Victorville, California
Mojave Air & Space Port, California
Roswell International Air Center, Roswell, New Mexico contains the remains of several large passenger and cargo jets, including at least two Boeing 747s and five Boeing 707s.
Abilene Regional Airport in Abilene, Texas is home to many retired Saab 340 aircraft, primarily from American Eagle Airlines.
RAF Aircraft Storage Flight, RAF Shawbury
Alice Springs Airport in Alice Springs, Northern Territory is the first large-scale aircraft boneyard outside the United States.
Canadian Forces Detachment Mountain View - Houses older aircraft for the CAF

parting at the boneyard at KMEBLaurinburg-Maxton Airport in Maxton, North Carolina, home of various former Northwest Airlines aircraft being stripped for parts by Charlotte Aircraft Corporation

For Tanks or AFV you have

Sierra Army Depot, California;
Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois;
Watervliet Arsenal, New York;
Lima Army Tank Plant, Ohio;
Anniston Army Depot, Alabama;
Red River Army Depot, Texas

25 Canadian Forces Supply Depot, Montreal QC - Main War Stock pile for the CAF

The US army surplus one near Honey Lake is huge!

https://maps.google.com/?ll=40.17309...69086&t=h&z=13

Thats amazing! I would think thats close enough to MILGOV HQ to be somewhat controlled...

Another thing to consider is support (fuel, ammo, lubricants). It's one thing to have 100 M1a1 Abrams tanks but quite another to find the necessary fuel and other stuff to even get 10 of them running.
Also the mechanics and other technicians to bring them online and keep them in the field.

Going by the v1.0 timeline, I imagine that a lot of older gear (M113s, for example) would be shipped to China. Newer stuff would go towards beefing up American reserve units in anticipation of a possible hot war with the Soviets; so increasing domestic storage capacity probably wouldn't be necessary.

Understood.

My thinking is an idea for another "Lima Incident" style encounter...

I hear rumors of a warehouse in Red River filled with M551 Sheridans and M2HB's. Lets go check it out... :)

But Id like to have a better understanding of how/where things like this were stored pre war so I can develop the back story some. I hate stories that just plop out of nowhere.

Rather than a storage facility, use a shipment of vehicles in transit. The train derailed due to a nuclear strike and, because of its remote location and the general chaos of the TDM, was never recovered. Somewhere out in the Rockies is a ravine full of armor and spare parts...

- C.

Love it... and as I am trying to develop a story line about the Southern Alps this would fit in great.

That would be the Sierra Army Depot as stated above

Waterlievet is the only barrel manufacturer for alot of heavy guns in the U.S.

Good information there...thanks.

Please note, some are near primary sites, and also during a run-up to war many of those vehicles would have already been deployed (for example, the 2000+ Abrams tanks in CA wouldn't be sitting there).

So I'd lower my expectations quite a bit on what would just be "in storage".

Agreed for the M1's...but they wouldbe be so quick to try and deploy the Sheridans to a main line unit.

Or even consider the idea noted above...a train on the way to port going through a city that just got nuked...and a dozen shiny new M1A1's sitting on a derailed freight line. :)

An allternative to the derailed train would be a ship sitting docked and slowly rusting away at some abandoned container port with who knows what sitting in its hold.

Good idea...would EMP kill a container ship like it is supposed to a kill a car?

Surplus aircraft are not stored in Hardened Aircraft Shelters, for the most part, they are stored in hangers or mothballed in plastic covering with dehumidifer equipment to prevent corrison. This would only be done if the aircraft was still in service with the U.S. or allies.

Obsolete aircraft are stripped of any useful material and then go to the bone yards in prep for smelting down, sooner or later.

For the Army hardware, one of the biggest drawbacks is ammunition. Sadly, propellent does start to breakdown over time, even if properly stored and there comes a point when it is necessary to salvage or even destroy the rounds. This is one of the drawbacks of placing the M-551 back into service, for a very long time, there was only one battalion in active service (with the 82nd Abn), as the Vietnam-era ammo was used or salvaged, there was very little new production of the 152mm ammo, at most only some 500 rounds per year from 1980 onwards. With the decision to withdraw the Sheridan, production was stopped and the production machinery was scrapped in 1992-1993.

Even allowing for increasing tensions, I seriously doubt that the Sheridan would have been retained in service. The vehicles had simply been well-used for over twenty years. This was the reason that the Army pushed for the development of the M-8 AGS system, based on a currently in service chassis and using ammunition that the Army had adequate stocks and was still in production (at least for military assistance and foreign sales).

Thats logical...agreed.

But still 10 Sheridans rolling down the street even just using its MG's would be more effective than being without the armor.

But remember, my point of view is more domestically then for front line units...so ANY armor is better then what most units back in the states have at this stage. :)

I agree that even a AFV armed with machine guns trumps civilian vehicles packed with rifle carrying maraders.

I just feel that it is more likely for the M-113s to be pulled from mothballs, and limited production of the V-series of armored cars is more likely.

Pulling the Sheridans back into service is a wonderful idea, but the source for maintenance spares is limited to a very limited selection in government warhouses or stripping mothballed Sheridans for engines and trannies. Its an obsolete system, that used a lot of non-standard parts. Even when the battalion was operational with the 82nd, they had to strip parts to keep the fire control and engines operational. The Army simply did not produce spare parts following the decision to remove the Sheridan from service in the
1980s.

So you are thrown back into a Catch-22 situation. You may have 1,500 Sheridans that have enjoyed minimal protection from the elements and have been stripped for parts for the last decade to support the operational battalion (and the NTC!). You may be very lucky to field more than a dozen machine gun armed vehicles, at least not without extensive modernization and resources would most likely by used on the front line equipment, at least until the Thanksgiving Day Massacre!


Still! It would be fun to see a 152mm Canister round going off!!!!

Resurrecting the thread for another Foxtrot Alpha post:

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the...aga-1686588702

Relevant to discussions of bringing back old aircraft from boneyard stocks:

And that's just basic flying condition, not full combat readiness.

- C.

With the expansion of the Army during the war I am betting that much of the stored equipment would have been used to help equip the 12 Light Infantry Divisions the Army created out of the training units.

That alone probably took care of most if not all the remaining older M113s' in storage. They would need armor too and that is where it makes sense to bring the Sheridan's out of the bone yard - but probably at the rate of getting one or two good ones for every 10-15 in storage after cannibalizing everything that still works.

And with the continuing tensions the Army might have kept them in service a lot longer and thus spares and ammo might have been a lot more plentiful -

And they made 88,000 Shillelagh missiles - so if the Sheridan stayed operational right up to the war start - which given the tensions is a good bet - then there might be a significant amount of them available

And remember a full ammo load for them is only 19 cannon rounds and ten missiles - so if you get, say 150 operational Sheridans out of what you have stored you very well could get enough ammo for at least one full ammo load per vehicle, possibly two

Well, say that you.manage to get 150 operational...from a tanker standpoint, the Sheridan was not a great tank. It's hull could protect against up to 12.7mms AP, but was very vulnerable to RPGs and mines. The rate of fire of the main gun was horrible, the standard 105mms M68 can fire roughly 12 to 15 aimed rounds per minute, the 152mms has a max rate of fire of 2 rounds per minute. The breech design prevented a faster loading cycle. Then we have the Shillelagh missile...it's an IR beam rider design that requires the gunner to maintain lock.on the target...it did have a punch equal to the TOW missile and had an effective range of 2000m...it's minimum range was a horrible 800m giving it a very short engagement envelope. These are the major reasons why it was pulled from service. The running joke when I was still in service was that even the
Marines would not take them!

11B Light Infantry is foot infantry. They don't have M113s. The Hq unit has 2-3 HMMWVs, 1-2 2 1/2ton trucks, and 1 HMMWV ambulance. A full unit motor movement for light infantry is conducted by a transportation company, or pooling the entire battalions trucks and moving one company at a time to a staging area.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...my/toe/lid.htm

11M is Mechanized Infantry and organic to Armored Divisions they ride in M113s up to the 90s and transition completely to M2 Bradleys.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...y/toe/mech.htm

Turret rings are universal sizes. Could one accommodate an A-0 Bradley turret? A LAV-25 turret? a PIVAD turret?

Like I said a Sheridan is better than nothing - and against marauders armed with civilian and military rifles and even 12.7mm MG its an effective vehicle - and I even with a low rate of fire I would hate to be against it if all I had was a armored bank truck with a couple of machine guns on it.

Now if you run into Soviet Division Cuba you have some real issues

And the light divisions I am talking about are the ones formed from the training units in the game not regular or even National Guard formations - I mean the ad-hoc divisions added in haste in 1998

I.e. the 70th, 76th, 78th, 80th, 84th, 85th, 91st, 95th, 98th, 100th, 104th and 108th Infantry Divisions that MilGov and CivGov formed in 1998 after the TDM

If you look at their makeup they only had foot infantry battalions and towed 105's - so any armor of any kind would be very welcome to them

and you can tell they got some armor or inherited it - several of them had tanks or M728's - if they had those you can see them grabbing anything else they could get their hands on too especially after the Mexican invasion

and there was the AGS-Sheridan which was a standard M551 Sheridan hull with the turret of the Stingray light tank. It lost out to the M8 Armored Gun System from FMC/BAE

For storage, a lot of names were off the list.

I would suggest checking out, "Purple Depot." Which are storage depots in the US.

M113s, I see them all the time in the desert on ops. Some units have few, others have ALOT. Most are support vehicles of course, ambulances, com, command etc.

As was said, its better than just being foot mobile.

As for armor, one must consider where it is employed. In open ground yeah, in urban, woodland or mountains as an infantryman I'd feel confident against armor with the right tools of course.

Other areas, beachheads, swamps or even soft sand areas. Again the use of terrain to limit your enemies movement similar minefields.

And of course, taking older vehicles and giving quick simply mods or even deploying them with upgrade kits like the did with the Humvees in Iraq and the Shermans in the hedgerow country to be added in the field.

I have no experience with the Sheridan, but, with its limits could they not be used more as an infantry support weapon rather than a traditional tank role? Providing a mobile heavy gun platform and machinegun support as well as the armor to shield infantrymen and even to drive over infantry positions or even small buildings or portions. Drive up to that pesky RPK firing through the loophole in that concrete building, and blast a beehive round through the window and let the grunts mop up.

The problem with tanks is that sooner or later they are going to go up against the other guys tanks. In order to beat the other guys, you have to able to shoot first, hit first and kill or disable with that shot. The atgm had a narrow engagement window at best, you might get one or maybe two missiles off before you had to switch to conventional rounds, then your maximum possible rate of fire was two rounds per minute. Shoot and scoot is your mantra.

The drawbacks of the Sheridan restricted it the role of infantry support vehicle, in a single battalion, in a single division. It was kept in that role because it was the only tank that could be air dropped. Even that division depended on regimental antitank companies equipped with TOW for its primary antitank defense.

The only combat test of Sheridan in a traditional tank role was in Vietnam. It was easy to knock out with RPGs. It's armor protection was so bad, that if the crew was not killed immediately, they had to bail out before the ammo fire finished the job.

In Desert Storm, the Sheridan was used as a bunker buster and was never used against Iraqi armor.

When it was first introduced, it was a gee-whiz tech solution and it didn't work. It is to the eternal credit of its crews that they were able to perform their missions in spite of its drawbacks, but there are good and sound reasons why the decision was made to remove it from service. I find it hard to come up with any reason why scarce resources would have been wasted in trying to bring the Sheridan back into operational service.

Just to challenge convention....... Wouldn't the more modern M1s and M60s be sent overseas and older M48s kept at home? The better to fight them there, than fight them at home. Any M60s or newer still on U.S. soil would be Guard units or Federal units waiting to ship, or training units churning out replacements for losses overseas.


Further, wouldn't the States individually be getting any armor no matter how old operational? While it doesn't make sense for the Army on a large scale to throw effort into a getting a M4A2 Sherman or a M3 Stuart operational a State can fund them as one offs... Swapping the radial for a cummins diesel. Having machine shops make AP or Canister shot for a 75mm or 37mm. Turning over gun shops looking for 1919s. Lots of towns have WW2 relics and plenty of WW2 generation vets that know how to get these things running.

Even in WW2 there was appeals for any hobbyist with the right skills to turn out war materials. Wooden crates for example. Firing pins, etc.

t is possible and somewhat common for M3/M5 Stuart owners to convert their 2-engine power plants for 350 or 454 Chevy V-8s. This would be advantageous for an owner who has bought one without engines or whose engines are not practical to rebuild.

I am not sure if a M24 Chaffee can benefit from this, but I wouldn't doubt it.

Dave

Keep in mind the thread with the very real possibility that the tanks and other armored vehicles at the Littlefield collection, many of which had live barrels and operational fire control systems, would have been used in 2000 and 2001 to get the CA MilGov units some armor

and remember that the Mexican's only real tank they had (at least based on real world info) was the Stuart tank

As for the Sheridans taking on other tanks - most likely by the time the Army got around to getting more of them in the fight their wouldnt have been many tanks on the other side left to get in the fight

most likely they would have been used openly against infantry that didnt have ATGM's or RPG's - look at the Texas module for instance - the marauder and Mexican units described had very few of either of those weapons - there a Sheridan could be decisive in a battle -

and there is always this - its cold blooded but it works - i.e. you use the Sheridans to draw fire and find the enemy ATGM's and tanks and then take them out with the only M1A1 or M60 or M48 you have operational

I wonder how much of it would have gone to the collection with the V1 timeline and without a collapse of the Soviet Union. In that rather darker world less of this stuff would have gone to collectors and more kept by nation states for reserves and militia call ups or training. That said some of it would be a more of a logistical burden than help as armor support. I would see them in the defense of critical assets like air fields, rail yards, supply depots, and refineries before I would see burdening a unit with even one. Their too susceptible to modern light anti armor weapons lacking spall liners, fire extinguishers, compartmentalized fuel, and ammunition.
I would have sworn they had some Shermans and Lees too. I don’t know why in this any of the timelines that this Mexican army did not atleast purchase some T55s from Cuba or Nicaragua. Those are light enough to move quickly with a civilian semi and low boy trailer.
Tanks draw fire. Everybody moves under the umbrella of their own fire support.
The first operational kill of a tank is world war one and that was with artillery, the preferred engagement method. ATGMs and LAWs are defensive weapons.

Shouldn’t need to do that. A maneuver commander preps probable locations with artillery fires that only stop (shift to the next target) as the armor platoon arrives on it with infantry support.

Doctrinally, on first sighting the flash and smoke of an ATGM the crew executes a turn toward the launcher or oblique across the front, fires smoke grenades, and starts the smoke generator. The gunner engage the launch are with the coaxial machinegun aided by thermal sights to make life hard for SACLOS systems like Mexican BGM-71 TOW 1 systems. The Battalion FO behind them is shifting BN 81mm mortars onto the enemy ATGM source using the armors tracers to backtrace the launcher. The Brigade FO is calling down the Divarty reserve 105mm to saturate that area too. The infantry support is going to dismount move up, call for a shift fire by the BN and BDE FOs and then mop up that launcher and any support it had. Any commander that was using his troops as live bait would be sacked and probably court martialed for good cause. Soldiery is dangerous but, one expects not to be wasted needlessly. You can get a new tank from the factory is six months or a year but, crewmen are going to need 18 years to hatch.

the question is whether or not there would any divisional artillery to fire at enemy ATGM teams - by 2000 the Mexican Army has almost no artillery left and if you look at many of the light divisions with as few men as they have left several of them might be down to foot infantry and a few mortars and thats it

As for the Mexican Army - the only Shermans they ever got were basically engineering vehicles - they had Stuarts for tanks but they never invested in anything heavier than APC's and armored cars otherwise as their main opponents were either bandit groups, internal rebel groups that had no armor of any kind and drug lords and criminal groups - in other words they didnt need tanks

Now here the real question is whether or not in 1996 and 1997 would they have tried to get some armor from possibly the Brazilians or maybe the Israelis after it was pretty obvious that things were getting very very bad indeed worldwide and they knew that possibly the US might start looking at their oil resources - if they did then they you could be looking at Sherman tanks from Israel, more Stuarts to complement the force they had from South American countries that were operating them (for instance Paraguay) and also some stuff from Brazil

But not sure if the US would ok Israel shipping them to Mexico - at least not after Israel joined up with CENTCOM as an ally - and the fact that they would have to ship them thru the Med which was a very unhealthy place to be in 1996 and 1997

Now could you see some T-55's from Cuba and Nicaragua - possibly - but since Cuba was trying to stay under the US radar they might not have arrived till after TDM - by then the US wasn't in much of a position to stop trade from Cuba to Mexico (after all they didn't stop the Soviets being shipped from Cuba to Mexico and they were a much bigger threat than a freighter full of T-55's) - and if Nicaragua openly supported the Soviets there might not have been many of those tanks still around after a few US airstrikes

As for Littlefield's collection - keep in mind that a lot of his Soviet stuff he got from places like Egypt and the like - and while he won't have his SCUD he would probably have most of his Western tanks, APC's, armored cars and the like - the ones he obtained before the Twilight War start between the Soviets and Chinese are more than enough to help MilGov a lot - and his other big contribution are his techs and his shop - which is exactly what you need to put stuff like the Sheridans back together and into operation

I can think of one reason.

DESPERATION with little other options.

Then again, remove the gun from the turret and install a Bushmaster or a TOW system or something else that is common and fairly simple.

http://i613.photobucket.com/albums/t...ps517ced85.jpg
Done

In a nut shell...you would have had M1A1 and M1A2 assigned to Germany, REFORGER would pull the same vehicles from the POMCUS sets. The National Guard follow up divisions would have a mix of M48A5/M60A1/M60A3/IPM1.

The equipment sets left by the Regular Army units committed to REFORGER, they were intended to be shipped as battlefield replacements, this, filled out with new construction and battlefield repaired tanks was was what was supposed to keep the Army going.

So, arguments can be made that the NG divisions would be equipped with front-line gear, especially prior to shipment overseas, reasonable. Right up to the Mexican invasion, then it becomes a come as you are war.

Sigh...I work as auditor for DOD, I get paid the big bucks to travel to these storage facilities just to count the gear AND what condition it is in. Trust me, the M551s in "storage" are in no condition to be locked, cocked and ready to go.

They will require very extensive rebuilds on the scale of what is done at Anniston Army Depot. You will then have to find serviceable missiles and cannon ammo and again, there is not that much out there, that has not been condemned.

As far as slapping 75mms guns, TOWs, etc., Canon has this output going to the LAVs and other front line equipment, just how much can be spared to bring back to life an out-dated hulk left to rot in the desert sun for the last quarter century?

I was speaking in gaming terms and desperation and imagination. Look at the vehicle guide, WWII the mods done to armor. Or even Vietnam and the "Gun Trucks."

As I said earlier, I've never even seen a Sheridan. Just going with the concept of using what is available to bring it online in some useful manner. And never was the idea of bringing it back to go toe to toe with modern 1st tier armor.

But, remember some pact nations still have T-55s and T-64/5s as their tier 1 armor. And then, how old is the T-72? Which if I recall correctly, the T-90 is just an updated T-72 since the T-80 didn't work as promised...or am I getting them reversed?

Another issue, how many US armored vehicles have been completely destroyed to the point they are written off and not sent back to be rebuilt? Unless its a catastrophic kill of course. And would this not be the case if the balloon went up? This as I recall was the case in WWII where green crews got in after the holes were patched and the blood washed out.