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Originally Posted by ChalkLine
Sorry for thread drift, but this storage has never been really addressed. The Russians built enough tanks to totally replace the whole tank inventory of the west every year, with the elderly going into dispersed storage. This was where the old AK-47s went as well, as well as the DPMs and DPShs and all the other goodies. There was and is tens of thousands of unused SKS carbines there, just in case. The storage, as its name suggests, was built in simple earth berm bunkers or caches small enough to be a pain in the arse to strike with strategic weapons, and scattered to survive nuclear strikes. Nothing underlies the Russian claims that their militarism was defensive so much as these caches, as it's useless for an aggressive war.
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Great point, Chalkline!
To reiterate, the USSR had an unbelievable amount of old weapons stored away. The numbers are hard to pin down on tanks, but a few tidbits: in 1990 for the 45th Anniversary of VE Day the parade featured an entire T-34/85 regiment running through Red Square. For Jason's Soviet Army Guide we're looking at about 62,000 tanks assigned to Soviet units (including 19 Mobilization Only tank divisions) and another 10,500 in war reserve. On the small arms side, here in the US there has been a pretty much non-stop flood of old weapons from Russia into the civilian market since 1992 or so. Mosin Nagants have never stopped coming, the flow of SKSs was heavy but has now stopped, the Tokarev SVT-40s, captured Gewehr41s and 43s likewise came and went and Russian-captured Mausers are still coming in. Makarov, Mosin revolvers and Tokarevs are all coming in too. The PPsH and early model AKs never arrived on the US civilian market due to their full-auto features, but the number (and excellent condition) of WWII-era weaponry is truly staggering. In a T2k context I can easily see all Soviet combat troops having AKs of one type or another (with the troops in Category A units in the Western military districts with the most modern and Mobilization-only troops in the Urals with the oldest), with support troops (truck drivers, depot guards, etc.) and militia in areas near the Soviet borders armed with SKSs, militia inside the USSR with WWII-era weapons like the SVT, Mosin and Mauser.
On the NATO side, keep in mind that the Norwegians used the MG-34 in 8mm through the 1980s, and that the Danish, Greek and Turkish army reserves were issued M-1 Garands in the 1980s. And NATO's newest members in the v1 timeline, Romania and Jugoslavia, also were small arms hoarders on a scale comparable to the USSR. (And as far as old equipment goes, Jugoslav coastal artillery in the late 1980s had some 100-year old guns in service!).