[chico20854]

During the pre-tactical nuclear phase of the war I would imagine battlefield recovery teams would follow advancing NATO troops to scavenge useable parts, vehicles, weapons, equipment and ammo left by retreating Pact forces to keep the NVA (former East german Army) going. Given the situation, a large-scale reequipment of the NVA would be impossible for a number of reasons - there wasn't enough spare equipment to do so (and all industrial capacity was devoted to replacing combat losses) and the troops couldn't be spared from the front for re-equipment and retraining (which would have been an extensive process, trying to rebuild "muscle memory", and in the case of T-72s, adding new members to an existing organization).

Also keep in mind that NATO countries and their allies had some Pact-standard manufacturing ability. Israel used captured Pact geat for years and must have had some way of obtaining or manufacturing spares and ammunition for the systems that they didn't replace/upgrade, and Egypt had a quite active defense industry that turned out D-30s and ZU-23-2s and a wide variety of Pact-caliber ammo. I'd imagine that this production went into high gear in 1996 in an attempt to resupply the Chinese Army.

Post-nuclear exchange things change a bit. Coordination between NATO units, such as the coordinated battlefield salvage efforts, would break down (possibly only to a level of barter, possibly entirely), as units hoarded whatever useable weapons and vehicles they could get. Until that time, I wouldn't imagine much Pact equipment and gear possessed by NATO forces due to the need to keep the NVA in the field - only small quantities of captured gear for technical evaluation purposes. Small lots of foreign equipment deep in the NATO rear (in the UK or USA, for example) I would imagine would quickly be abandoned due to lack of spares and ammo, especially for the more exotic items.