Tank graveyard

[Legbreaker]

Absolutely heartbreaking to a military enthusiast.
I wonder how many more places like it are scattered around the world.
How much drooling would the average PC group be doing if they stumbled across it? How much wailing once they realised they'd all seized up and were almost all basically irreparable?
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015...arkov-ukraine/

[aspqrz]

Irrepairable?

Almost certainly not.

As long as the hulls are sound all they need is a new engine, drive train, transmission, probably a new suspension, new road wheels (or can they replace the rubber rims? never been a Tanker, don't know), a new gun and fire control system, new electronics etc.

And the finished result would be fine ...

... but it would be costly.

And you could buy more modern tanks.

The real reason would be mainly because the old Soviet era idea of massed tank attacks where 2-3 cheap Soviet tanks can die for each expensive western one and yet still win ... don't cut it any more.

So, economically, there's no need to refurbish them ... it's not that it's impossible.

AIUI there were similar depots scattered across the USSR (when it was still the USSR) into the 1980s with T-34s and T-44s and late WW2 or immediate postwar armoured vehicles in mothballs, with small maintenance cadres at a TO&E level below even Category III units, all waiting for their day of need ... which, of course, never came.

If something like the Twilight War had been fought, you would have seen them back in service ... eventually ...

Different times.

Phil

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by aspqrz

Irrepairable?

In the T2K sense I meant where the PCs only have the resources at their finger tips. In other words, maybe they'd be able to cobble together a handful of tanks out of the hundreds in the facility, but the rest would be essentially impossible with the available resources.

Of course in T2K those particular tanks wouldn't be anywhere near as deteriorated (20 years less than in the pictures) and almost certainly have already been refurbished and put back into service by 1997 at the latest. The facility, and the factory down the road the article mentioned, would also likely attract a nuke.

However, throwing something like that at PCs (perhaps a forgotten underground storage facility full of T-34s) could be fun for the more evil GM.

[rcaf_777]

Hard to say what your PC could find, in areas of recent fighting you find AFV that are awaiting salvage or repair and possible the repair recovery or salvage crew

In other areas you might find AFV hulls strip of all their usefully parts. I could see this being a business done by military and civilians, hulls would be the only thing left behind, and that would depend on the demand of scrap metal and weather someone could recycle it.

There was a Canadian LAV that a combat loss in Afghanistan after all the useable materials and components were removed the LAV was basically destroyed by an airstrike. Locals then came out cut up what they could with torches and sold it for scrap in Pakistan. There was still a lot of metal left behind as they did have anything an industrial scale.

I will look around for some pictures that I might have.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Those tanks would have all been long-before committed to the front. What they'd find is an empty, weedy lot.

[Raellus]

A lot of those tanks appear to covered in reactive armor blocks. Wouldn't that mean that there was explosive still in there? How would that hold up over time and exposed to the elements?