A point I haven't seen brought up in this thread (although maybe I missed it) is that you'd be far, far more likely to see many of these obsolescent vehicles than cutting-edge ones, just as a matter of logistics. Where were all the T-80Us and M1A1s? On the front line. That means that most of them got blow'd up in the first weeks of the war. The repair yards get blow'd up too, the spares get used up or blow'd up. Pretty soon there's not many functioning cool guy tanks around.
All of the above, in super fast motion, for aircraft.
Meanwhile, months or even years later, huge numbers of T-55s and M60s and M48s and T-34s are showing up to keep the show going. I doubt there are a whole lot of replacement T-80s coming, especially once the nukes drop.
Someone said a tank that's out of main gun rounds isn't better than a sandbag emplacement. Functionally true, maybe. In terms of morale on your average infantryman, it's pretty hard to beat the effect of knowing a TANK is guarding the approach to a town. (and I've personally seen this effect even in-game. It's great. One immobile T-55 is plenty enough to send the players scattering to rethink their whole plan -- as well it should!)
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