We've all seen what modern ATGMs do to even the most modern Cold War-era Russian MBTs. Western tanks aren't invulnerable either. Israeli Merkava IVs- arguably some of the best protected MBTs on the planet, at the time- proved vulnerable to Soviet-era ATGMs during the 2006 fighting in Lebanon.
I imagine that the West would try to arm the PLA on the cheap, as some here have quite reasonably postulated, but I wonder how stocks of older, unguided AT weapons (recoilless rifles, RPG-7s, LAWs, bazookas, and the like) would perform against up-to-date Soviet T-72s and T-64s equipped with reactive armor (or composite add-on passive armors). The trouble with unguided systems, compared to most ATGMs, is that the user has to wait until the enemy AFV is much closer before engaging. If one hopes for a KO, as opposed to a mobility kill, that probably means setting up for a flank or rear shot. These tactics might be effective, but they're extremely hazardous to the LAW user, especially if the OPFOR is properly employing combined arms tactics to deal with infantry armed with light antitank weaponry. I reckon the PLA would demand more powerful, longer-ranged, guided systems, just like Ukraine has. I reckon the West, eager to blunt Soviet aggression, would oblige.
As described in the v1 timeline, the Second Sino-Soviet War would be a larger scale conflict than the current war in Ukraine, so I'd expect that expenditures of Western ATGMs in said would far exceed what we've seen in recent months, IRL. Again, even if production in the west ramped up to full capacity, and new production lines opened as war in the East threatened to metastasize, by the time conflict in Europe erupts, stocks wouldn't be much larger than pre-war (I still think they'd be smaller by then), and early expenditures there would be one a scale not yet seen IRL, rapidly burning through existing stocks and outpacing new production.
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Originally Posted by chico20854
For context, the maximum economic production rate for US anti-tank systems in 1986-7 was 30,000 TOW IIs and 6,720 Hellfires a year and 15,000 AT-4s a month (running that plant with 2 shifts). These numbers also raise the question of, if they were all fired at Pact AFVs, factoring for misses, misfires, etc., would any Pact AFVs remain?)
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Probably not, but one must also factor in missiles lost in transit (Soviet subs would probably send at least a few hundred to the bottom of the Atlantic) and battlefield losses. I imagine the Soviets would lean heavily on massed artillery fires, to which dismounted ATGM crews would be particularly vulnerable. I also wonder how many missiles a disgruntled or traitorous factory worker could sabotage before being caught.
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