Quote:
Originally Posted by Ursus Maior
Are you sure those were still usable? IISS' The Military Balance 1997 (p. 215) lists them as static defence [notice the European spelling] artillery together with T-34s and SU-100s. Though there were also T-34s fielded as MBTs as per the report (together with T-54, T-55 and T-62), no IS-2 are mentioned under the MBT section. That doesn't mean they couldn't have been restored to working conditions, though. It just means, they weren't in a working condition.
As per IISS' The Military Balance of 1989 (p. 190), these IS-2 hadn't been in working condition for quite some time: In this issue, "some 15 JS-2" had already been used as static defence artillery by that time. It might be worth noting that in the 1989-1990 timeframe, no T-34s were listed under the "MBT" section and some 150 T-54/-55 were listed as in store or static coast defence, whereas the 1997 issue clearly puts the T-34 under the MBT category and no T-54/-55 are listed as "in store or static coast defence".
So, either Cuba actually reactivated an unknown number of T-34s and up to 150 T-54/-55 from static duty following the collapse of the Soviet Union or IISS figures turned out to be inaccurate after the end of Cuba's patron state. Either way, the IS-2s probably weren't active for quite some time, once the Twilight War started. A intermittent reactivation during the 1990s can also be excluded, I checked the 1994-1995 (combined) issue of IISS' The Military Balance and found the same 15 IS-2 being on static duty as before and after.
I'd say, heavy tanks were pretty much dead during the 1990s, except for the occasional museum pieces, including some IS-3. The only exception being IS-2 and IS-3 that were used by South Ossetian forces and Georgian forces respectively during the low-intesity conflicts of the decade. Of course, who knows really what equipment mobilization only divisions of the Soviet Army would have fielded and how long it would have taken the Soviets to bring that type of equipment back into action. This is pretty much fantasy novel artistic license reigning here as almost nothing is known about Soviet deep mobilization plans including spare parts in depots or the tools to produce them. It could be these divisions would have been available with a somewhat unified TOE after a year or so or one would see Studebakers, BTR-40s and T-34s in homeopathic dosages next to Mosin Nagants, PPSh-41 and VAZ-2101 Zhigulis for transport.
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The Soviets were using them as bunkers and for coastal defense but also still had ones that were mobile as well into the late 80’s and early 90’s. It may be a question more of V1 versus V2.2. The V1 world where the Cold War never ended is one where the Soviets and Cubans never went thru the draw downs that would have occurred in V2.2. In a V1 scenario I could easily see the Cubans still having the T34 and IS-2M’s ready to go as needed instead of being used for static defense by the time of the war.
By the way I always like Cuba as a place Mexico could have gotten armor for their army from - i.e. Cuba needs oil, Mexico needs armor (keep in mind they were still operating Stuart tanks in the 90's) - T34-85's and IS-2M's would be a pretty good buy for them (considering that a lot of Central American and South American countries at the time were operating old WWII and early Cold War armor) in exchange for oil for Cuba