Quote:
Originally Posted by HaplessOperator
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.
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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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