Aircraft/Armor Surplus Storage

[kalos72]

So I have been looking through alot of Chico's stuff and some other posts here to find we store 1000's of older vehicles. I knew we did it, just not to that numbers I found.

Where the hell do they store 409 AH-1F's or 1500 M551's?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by kalos72

So I have been looking through alot of Chico's stuff and some other posts here to find we store 1000's of older vehicles. I knew we did it, just not to that numbers I found.

Where the hell do they store 409 AH-1F's or 1500 M551's?

Helos stored outside would have covers over engine inlets and spraylat everywhere else. Fuel and hydraulic fluid would be completely drained as well. Inside they'd still be drained of fuel and fluids but likely not covered in spraylat.

Vehicles would just be parked. There's 2000 M1 tanks stored thusly in California (new builds, too; I guess the Army decided it was cheaper to keep acquiring them than to terminate the contract, despite not having the personnel, TOE or missions for them...)

[kalos72]

Ok so lets assume some of these newer vehicles would be sent overseas as replacements, I doubt they would WANT to sent 8000 M113's to mainline troops in Europe unless they HAD to. So where do you store them?

Any suggestions, real or storyline driven are welcome.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Ok so lets assume some of these newer vehicles would be sent overseas as replacements, I doubt they would WANT to sent 8000 M113's to mainline troops in Europe unless they HAD to. So where do you store them?

Any suggestions, real or storyline driven are welcome.

Well...any aircraft would be stored in hardened air shelters. Given that helos can be put on roller-wheels to move them in and out of storage, and an unarmed AH-1 series bird has a really narrow cross section, you could probably pack quite a few inside an HAS. So basically anywhere there was a surviving air shelter is where you could keep them. Otherwise, a warehouse, etc. would do.

Same goes for armored vehicles: a warehouse, etc. would suffice. Anywhere you could string concertina wire and set up defensive points, and be assured of little or no observation by enemy troops would do the trick for a "vehicle depot". I'm not sure what the weight considerations would be but a multi-storey parking garage might do: Bremen, for example, was missed in the nuclear strikes of '97 (and earlier) and may well have some civilian parking garages that would suffice for lighter armored vehicles. Don't know that I'd stick a bunch of Leo-IIIs on the top deck of one of those though...

[rcaf_777]

There are a few places you would store aircraft and AFV's

For Aircraft you have

Kingman Airport, Kingman, Arizona
Phoenix Goodyear Airport, Goodyear, Arizona
Pinal Airpark, Marana, Arizona
309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona
Southern California Logistics Airport, Victorville, California
Mojave Air & Space Port, California
Roswell International Air Center, Roswell, New Mexico contains the remains of several large passenger and cargo jets, including at least two Boeing 747s and five Boeing 707s.
Abilene Regional Airport in Abilene, Texas is home to many retired Saab 340 aircraft, primarily from American Eagle Airlines.
RAF Aircraft Storage Flight, RAF Shawbury
Alice Springs Airport in Alice Springs, Northern Territory is the first large-scale aircraft boneyard outside the United States.
Canadian Forces Detachment Mountain View - Houses older aircraft for the CAF

parting at the boneyard at KMEBLaurinburg-Maxton Airport in Maxton, North Carolina, home of various former Northwest Airlines aircraft being stripped for parts by Charlotte Aircraft Corporation

For Tanks or AFV you have

Sierra Army Depot, California;
Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois;
Watervliet Arsenal, New York;
Lima Army Tank Plant, Ohio;
Anniston Army Depot, Alabama;
Red River Army Depot, Texas

25 Canadian Forces Supply Depot, Montreal QC - Main War Stock pile for the CAF

[Cdnwolf]

The US army surplus one near Honey Lake is huge!

https://maps.google.com/?ll=40.17309...69086&t=h&z=13

[kalos72]

Thats amazing! I would think thats close enough to MILGOV HQ to be somewhat controlled...

[Frank Frey]

Another thing to consider is support (fuel, ammo, lubricants). It's one thing to have 100 M1a1 Abrams tanks but quite another to find the necessary fuel and other stuff to even get 10 of them running.
Also the mechanics and other technicians to bring them online and keep them in the field.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Ok so lets assume some of these newer vehicles would be sent overseas as replacements, I doubt they would WANT to sent 8000 M113's to mainline troops in Europe unless they HAD to. So where do you store them?

Any suggestions, real or storyline driven are welcome.

Going by the v1.0 timeline, I imagine that a lot of older gear (M113s, for example) would be shipped to China. Newer stuff would go towards beefing up American reserve units in anticipation of a possible hot war with the Soviets; so increasing domestic storage capacity probably wouldn't be necessary.

[kalos72]

Understood.

My thinking is an idea for another "Lima Incident" style encounter...

I hear rumors of a warehouse in Red River filled with M551 Sheridans and M2HB's. Lets go check it out...

But Id like to have a better understanding of how/where things like this were stored pre war so I can develop the back story some. I hate stories that just plop out of nowhere.

[Tegyrius]

Rather than a storage facility, use a shipment of vehicles in transit. The train derailed due to a nuclear strike and, because of its remote location and the general chaos of the TDM, was never recovered. Somewhere out in the Rockies is a ravine full of armor and spare parts...

- C.

[Cdnwolf]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Rather than a storage facility, use a shipment of vehicles in transit. The train derailed due to a nuclear strike and, because of its remote location and the general chaos of the TDM, was never recovered. Somewhere out in the Rockies is a ravine full of armor and spare parts...

- C.

Love it... and as I am trying to develop a story line about the Southern Alps this would fit in great.

[rcaf_777]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

The US army surplus one near Honey Lake is huge!

That would be the Sierra Army Depot as stated above

[.45cultist]

Waterlievet is the only barrel manufacturer for alot of heavy guns in the U.S.

[kalos72]

Good information there...thanks.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Please note, some are near primary sites, and also during a run-up to war many of those vehicles would have already been deployed (for example, the 2000+ Abrams tanks in CA wouldn't be sitting there).

So I'd lower my expectations quite a bit on what would just be "in storage".

[kalos72]

Agreed for the M1's...but they wouldbe be so quick to try and deploy the Sheridans to a main line unit.

Or even consider the idea noted above...a train on the way to port going through a city that just got nuked...and a dozen shiny new M1A1's sitting on a derailed freight line.

[Rainbow Six]

An allternative to the derailed train would be a ship sitting docked and slowly rusting away at some abandoned container port with who knows what sitting in its hold.

[kalos72]

Good idea...would EMP kill a container ship like it is supposed to a kill a car?

[dragoon500ly]

Surplus aircraft are not stored in Hardened Aircraft Shelters, for the most part, they are stored in hangers or mothballed in plastic covering with dehumidifer equipment to prevent corrison. This would only be done if the aircraft was still in service with the U.S. or allies.

Obsolete aircraft are stripped of any useful material and then go to the bone yards in prep for smelting down, sooner or later.

For the Army hardware, one of the biggest drawbacks is ammunition. Sadly, propellent does start to breakdown over time, even if properly stored and there comes a point when it is necessary to salvage or even destroy the rounds. This is one of the drawbacks of placing the M-551 back into service, for a very long time, there was only one battalion in active service (with the 82nd Abn), as the Vietnam-era ammo was used or salvaged, there was very little new production of the 152mm ammo, at most only some 500 rounds per year from 1980 onwards. With the decision to withdraw the Sheridan, production was stopped and the production machinery was scrapped in 1992-1993.

Even allowing for increasing tensions, I seriously doubt that the Sheridan would have been retained in service. The vehicles had simply been well-used for over twenty years. This was the reason that the Army pushed for the development of the M-8 AGS system, based on a currently in service chassis and using ammunition that the Army had adequate stocks and was still in production (at least for military assistance and foreign sales).

[kalos72]

Thats logical...agreed.

But still 10 Sheridans rolling down the street even just using its MG's would be more effective than being without the armor.

But remember, my point of view is more domestically then for front line units...so ANY armor is better then what most units back in the states have at this stage.

[dragoon500ly]

I agree that even a AFV armed with machine guns trumps civilian vehicles packed with rifle carrying maraders.

I just feel that it is more likely for the M-113s to be pulled from mothballs, and limited production of the V-series of armored cars is more likely.

Pulling the Sheridans back into service is a wonderful idea, but the source for maintenance spares is limited to a very limited selection in government warhouses or stripping mothballed Sheridans for engines and trannies. Its an obsolete system, that used a lot of non-standard parts. Even when the battalion was operational with the 82nd, they had to strip parts to keep the fire control and engines operational. The Army simply did not produce spare parts following the decision to remove the Sheridan from service in the
1980s.

So you are thrown back into a Catch-22 situation. You may have 1,500 Sheridans that have enjoyed minimal protection from the elements and have been stripped for parts for the last decade to support the operational battalion (and the NTC!). You may be very lucky to field more than a dozen machine gun armed vehicles, at least not without extensive modernization and resources would most likely by used on the front line equipment, at least until the Thanksgiving Day Massacre!


Still! It would be fun to see a 152mm Canister round going off!!!!

[Tegyrius]

Resurrecting the thread for another Foxtrot Alpha post:

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the...aga-1686588702

Relevant to discussions of bringing back old aircraft from boneyard stocks:

Even in Type 1000 storage, returning an aircraft to the air is no easy task. It took 70 days of constant work to get the Ghost Rider in a decent enough condition so that it could make its way to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.

And that's just basic flying condition, not full combat readiness.

- C.

[Olefin]

With the expansion of the Army during the war I am betting that much of the stored equipment would have been used to help equip the 12 Light Infantry Divisions the Army created out of the training units.

That alone probably took care of most if not all the remaining older M113s' in storage. They would need armor too and that is where it makes sense to bring the Sheridan's out of the bone yard - but probably at the rate of getting one or two good ones for every 10-15 in storage after cannibalizing everything that still works.

And with the continuing tensions the Army might have kept them in service a lot longer and thus spares and ammo might have been a lot more plentiful -

And they made 88,000 Shillelagh missiles - so if the Sheridan stayed operational right up to the war start - which given the tensions is a good bet - then there might be a significant amount of them available

And remember a full ammo load for them is only 19 cannon rounds and ten missiles - so if you get, say 150 operational Sheridans out of what you have stored you very well could get enough ammo for at least one full ammo load per vehicle, possibly two

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Olefin

With the expansion of the Army during the war I am betting that much of the stored equipment would have been used to help equip the 12 Light Infantry Divisions the Army created out of the training units.

That alone probably took care of most if not all the remaining older M113s' in storage. They would need armor too and that is where it makes sense to bring the Sheridan's out of the bone yard - but probably at the rate of getting one or two good ones for every 10-15 in storage after cannibalizing everything that still works.

And with the continuing tensions the Army might have kept them in service a lot longer and thus spares and ammo might have been a lot more plentiful -

And they made 88,000 Shillelagh missiles - so if the Sheridan stayed operational right up to the war start - which given the tensions is a good bet - then there might be a significant amount of them available

And remember a full ammo load for them is only 19 cannon rounds and ten missiles - so if you get, say 150 operational Sheridans out of what you have stored you very well could get enough ammo for at least one full ammo load per vehicle, possibly two

Well, say that you.manage to get 150 operational...from a tanker standpoint, the Sheridan was not a great tank. It's hull could protect against up to 12.7mms AP, but was very vulnerable to RPGs and mines. The rate of fire of the main gun was horrible, the standard 105mms M68 can fire roughly 12 to 15 aimed rounds per minute, the 152mms has a max rate of fire of 2 rounds per minute. The breech design prevented a faster loading cycle. Then we have the Shillelagh missile...it's an IR beam rider design that requires the gunner to maintain lock.on the target...it did have a punch equal to the TOW missile and had an effective range of 2000m...it's minimum range was a horrible 800m giving it a very short engagement envelope. These are the major reasons why it was pulled from service. The running joke when I was still in service was that even the
Marines would not take them!

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

With the expansion of the Army during the war I am betting that much of the stored equipment would have been used to help equip the 12 Light Infantry Divisions the Army created out of the training units.

That alone probably took care of most if not all the remaining older M113s' in storage. They would need armor too and that is where it makes sense to bring the Sheridan's out of the bone yard - but probably at the rate of getting one or two good ones for every 10-15 in storage after cannibalizing everything that still works.

11B Light Infantry is foot infantry. They don't have M113s. The Hq unit has 2-3 HMMWVs, 1-2 2 1/2ton trucks, and 1 HMMWV ambulance. A full unit motor movement for light infantry is conducted by a transportation company, or pooling the entire battalions trucks and moving one company at a time to a staging area.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...my/toe/lid.htm

11M is Mechanized Infantry and organic to Armored Divisions they ride in M113s up to the 90s and transition completely to M2 Bradleys.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...y/toe/mech.htm

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

Well, say that you.manage to get 150 operational...from a tanker standpoint, the Sheridan was not a great tank. It's hull could protect against up to 12.7mms AP, but was very vulnerable to RPGs and mines. The rate of fire of the main gun was horrible, the standard 105mms M68 can fire roughly 12 to 15 aimed rounds per minute, the 152mms has a max rate of fire of 2 rounds per minute. The breech design prevented a faster loading cycle. Then we have the Shillelagh missile...it's an IR beam rider design that requires the gunner to maintain lock.on the target...it did have a punch equal to the TOW missile and had an effective range of 2000m...it's minimum range was a horrible 800m giving it a very short engagement envelope. These are the major reasons why it was pulled from service. The running joke when I was still in service was that even the
Marines would not take them!

Turret rings are universal sizes. Could one accommodate an A-0 Bradley turret? A LAV-25 turret? a PIVAD turret?

[Olefin]

Like I said a Sheridan is better than nothing - and against marauders armed with civilian and military rifles and even 12.7mm MG its an effective vehicle - and I even with a low rate of fire I would hate to be against it if all I had was a armored bank truck with a couple of machine guns on it.

Now if you run into Soviet Division Cuba you have some real issues

And the light divisions I am talking about are the ones formed from the training units in the game not regular or even National Guard formations - I mean the ad-hoc divisions added in haste in 1998

I.e. the 70th, 76th, 78th, 80th, 84th, 85th, 91st, 95th, 98th, 100th, 104th and 108th Infantry Divisions that MilGov and CivGov formed in 1998 after the TDM

If you look at their makeup they only had foot infantry battalions and towed 105's - so any armor of any kind would be very welcome to them

and you can tell they got some armor or inherited it - several of them had tanks or M728's - if they had those you can see them grabbing anything else they could get their hands on too especially after the Mexican invasion

and there was the AGS-Sheridan which was a standard M551 Sheridan hull with the turret of the Stingray light tank. It lost out to the M8 Armored Gun System from FMC/BAE

[jester]

For storage, a lot of names were off the list.

I would suggest checking out, "Purple Depot." Which are storage depots in the US.

M113s, I see them all the time in the desert on ops. Some units have few, others have ALOT. Most are support vehicles of course, ambulances, com, command etc.

As was said, its better than just being foot mobile.

As for armor, one must consider where it is employed. In open ground yeah, in urban, woodland or mountains as an infantryman I'd feel confident against armor with the right tools of course.

Other areas, beachheads, swamps or even soft sand areas. Again the use of terrain to limit your enemies movement similar minefields.

And of course, taking older vehicles and giving quick simply mods or even deploying them with upgrade kits like the did with the Humvees in Iraq and the Shermans in the hedgerow country to be added in the field.

I have no experience with the Sheridan, but, with its limits could they not be used more as an infantry support weapon rather than a traditional tank role? Providing a mobile heavy gun platform and machinegun support as well as the armor to shield infantrymen and even to drive over infantry positions or even small buildings or portions. Drive up to that pesky RPK firing through the loophole in that concrete building, and blast a beehive round through the window and let the grunts mop up.

[dragoon500ly]

The problem with tanks is that sooner or later they are going to go up against the other guys tanks. In order to beat the other guys, you have to able to shoot first, hit first and kill or disable with that shot. The atgm had a narrow engagement window at best, you might get one or maybe two missiles off before you had to switch to conventional rounds, then your maximum possible rate of fire was two rounds per minute. Shoot and scoot is your mantra.

The drawbacks of the Sheridan restricted it the role of infantry support vehicle, in a single battalion, in a single division. It was kept in that role because it was the only tank that could be air dropped. Even that division depended on regimental antitank companies equipped with TOW for its primary antitank defense.

The only combat test of Sheridan in a traditional tank role was in Vietnam. It was easy to knock out with RPGs. It's armor protection was so bad, that if the crew was not killed immediately, they had to bail out before the ammo fire finished the job.

In Desert Storm, the Sheridan was used as a bunker buster and was never used against Iraqi armor.

When it was first introduced, it was a gee-whiz tech solution and it didn't work. It is to the eternal credit of its crews that they were able to perform their missions in spite of its drawbacks, but there are good and sound reasons why the decision was made to remove it from service. I find it hard to come up with any reason why scarce resources would have been wasted in trying to bring the Sheridan back into operational service.