Quote:
Originally Posted by ToughOmbres
My take-
[...] The old Quartermaster adage of "keep the best, issue the rest" would go out the window by, say, the second year of the war.
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I'd say, that goes out the window much, much quicker. It's a all hands on deck war very much from the beginning. That means big politics will want to micromanage quickly. So they start issuing orders for single divisions or brigades even. Sometimes certain elements in the militaries' apparatuses might be able to stop stupidities like this early on, but sometimes they won't.
Look at the current conflict in Ukraine: The good stuff went out the warehouses starting in June. That was 5 months into the war. The German Bundeswehr had exactly no SPGs to spare and no IFVs either. The industry didn't either. The Panzerhaubitze 2000 went out anyway and now, after the German defense minister has kept her hand on our 50 year old Marder IFVs for 10 1/2 months, the Bundeskanzler announced, we're giving them away nonetheless.
Yes, the numbers are minuscule compared to what was available in the mid-90s, but that doesn't change the general idea. I think, if in T2K a US ally would have asked for F-16s to switch from F-5s or F-104s in the face of a Soviet invasion, the US would easily have donated/sold/lend-and-leased a full wing. And why not? The F-16C/D was in full production, why not give away Block 10 frames from an ANG wing and reequip the ANG anew down the line with brand new F-16Cs? If that keeps the Soviets out of "nameless ally 6,000 miles to the East", it's better for them to fight on their soil (or not) than for the Soviets to creep closer and closer and eventually attack US forces directly.
I'd say, by year two of the Twilight War, we'd see ramping up of production for M40 recoilless rifles and M3 Carl Gustaf and their munitions. The former was in use by National Guard units during the last decade of the Cold War and the latter had just been introduced to the Rangers. With the ramping up of productions of ATGMs and other guided munitions since the war loomed or started, certain parts will become rather scarce. A recoilless rifle is a good support weapon for many applications, and with tandem shape charges becoming available to the M3, it can replace shoulder launched single purpose weapons like the Panzerfaust 3 (which, ironically, was bought to replace the Carl Gustaf M2). Certainly, neither the M40 nor the M3 can fully replace TOW, Javelin, Milan & Co., but better to have than have not. And once prime tier MBTs become sparse and their shiny sensor's start going dark, anti-tank warfare tools from the 60s and 70s will face their contemporary tanks (with minor upgrades). And then, a Carl Gustaf with tandem charge warheads will be king and thousands will go into all the light infantry divisions the US can still muster after 1997 and by early 1998.