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Old 06-12-2013, 09:36 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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Location: East Tennessee, USA
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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).
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