BTR in Nevada

[jester]

Originally Posted by dvyws

Couple of comments on the shipping issues:-

Transport and shipping facilities could be a problem. The vessels will they be there?

I would assume that the same ships that were bringing reinforcements across would be used to bring this stuff back. You wouldn't need any extra ships - I don't see Europe exporting much (except casualties...) so basically you just take advantage of the "empties", as and when they arise.

Will they sit in harbor the extra couple days or weeks now to load them making prime targets for Pact air and sea forces?

You are assuming old fashioned general cargo ships, which I don't think would be used to transport most military stuff in these circumstances. Even if the container loading system is stuffed (primarily thos huge straddle cranes that put the boxes onb to the ships), the ramp on a Ro-Ro ship makes the turnaround time a couple of days max ( a definite boon when in Damman in Saudi, much less convenient in New Orleans or Kobe...). And in most cases, loading and discharging is carried out simultaneously, so the stay in port would be much less prolongued than you would think.

At sea, more comerce raiders, a laden vessel handles slower than a unladen.

Err, no, not really - in fact the difference is negligible, We never figured in cargo quantity when passage planning. And don't forget, an unladen vessel will take on a large quantity of water ballast, for stability purposes.

An d of course the facilities to load and unload such vesels, since many of the major port facilities were severely damaged.

Well, if you have the facilities to discharge the reinforcements, they will work for the backload. And don't forget, with a ramp, all you need is an undamaged length of quay, no cranes and surprisingly little infrastructure is needed.

So I think the logistics of the idea are reasonable - although personally I think the same effort put in to shipping wrecked NATO gear back for repair/upgrade/cannibalisation/scrap would prove more effective in the long run.

I grew up in the tiny tiny tiny city of LOMITA. It was a hop skip and a jump from the port of Los Angeles/LongBeach and San Pedro. I worked in the area and my best freinds father was head of the long shoremans union <all winy bitches these days> who had a view of the harbor. It takes about 94 hours turnaround time for a vessel, true. Under modern times with the facilities. In T2K will we have those facilities?

I totaly agree that we should shit NATO gear back and that should have priority! They are reutilizing vehicles from Iraq the rebuild take a couple months, compared to the year it takes for a new one. In war time, I think we could probably pear down the build time to less no more than 3 months for an APC, if of course all things were running and the parts onhand. Call me optimistic, or just a tyrant, but I would providing the parts be on hand ensure the gear would be turning out a platoons worth of vehicles a week. This of course means running round the clock, no union BS! And the parts and aquisition were on hand.

But, the crux of the problem of hauling disabled vehicles off a pier or storeyard onto a vehicle hauler, is, you will have to lift them with a forklift or some other similiar vehicle place them and load. The roll on roll off vessels, well the vehicles rolling on and off are usualy mobile on their own. Not so with vehicles that have been blown apart. These need to be moved. And that poses a problem, the vehicles moving them need to be hooked up and unhooked, parts fall off, vehicles fall off their teathers and need to be reattatched and put in place. Alot of this takes a good five to ten minutes and more for a heavy mech vehicle. Even with a dozen of such vehicles, well figure 20 minutes per vehicle well we are talking an hour to load 12 vehicles. And the loaders both vehicles and men will need some downtime daily, let alone over a period of 96 hours.

That gives an idea in my mind of some of the issues one would face in such a tasdk, but it woudl be awesome to play. And I for one would love to have my team cruising through the US with a BRDM! It even gives me an idea for a campaign.

[Webstral]

Thanks, dvyws--I can't add much to your contribution.

Overall, I agree with everyone who has pointed out limiting factors behind shipping Pact vehicles to CONUS and Canada and repairing said vehicles. I don't believe that the US is going to refit very large numbers of Pact vehicles by July '97. Among NATO forces, the Germans are almost certainly going to be the NATO players who have the most success with resurrecting Pact gear due to the intimacy the East Germans enjoy (!) with that equipment—as you point out, Raellus.

Regarding shipping schedules, I think turnaround time for the Atlantic convoys will have some complicating factors that may open windows of opportunity to load some of the choicer items liberated from the Communists. Although logistics have taken an enormous stride forward with computerization, there are still so many pieces moving in the Battle of the Atlantic that it’s hard for me to see the Atlantic convoys turning around and heading back to the US in short order each and every time. I’m not a Navy man, so I won’t expound on the Navy’s potential difficulties other than to say that the Navy will be fighting a three-ocean war right through the nuclear exchange. Granted, we know that the Western navies establish a clear superiority in the North Atlantic soon after NATO joins the conflict in Germany; however, as was pointed out in the thread on Australia and nuclear attacks, we know little about the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Both of these bodies of water figured prominently in the superpower rivalry. As a result of early losses during the Battle of the Atlantic, the US and Royal Navies probably will find themselves working very hard to provide sufficient escorts for the Atlantic convoys such that the convoys move with the efficiency and alacrity that SACEUR wants. In other words, there probably will be some ships idled in the Netherlands and Germany between legs. This idle time may or may not offer opportunities for the planning authorities to work in loading for westbound shipments.

Now I certainly don’t believe westbound convoys will be delayed so that captured Pact gear can be loaded aboard them. I do agree that loading American and Canadian gear for refit will be important.

Regarding the state of captured Pact vehicles, I agree that a portion of the Pact AFV will be complete losses. Even catastrophic kills, though, offer some salvageable items. Nor is every kill is a catastrophic kill. One of the lessons of Operation Desert Storm is that APSDFSDU rounds don’t produce catastrophic kills as often as HEAT rounds under conditions where both solid penetrator and plasma bolt penetrate to the interior of the target vehicle. Although the spalling and pyrophoric effects of the uranium solid penetrators do ignite fuel and ammunition, catastrophic kills are markedly fewer among solid penetrator users vis-Ã*-vis HEAT round users achieving penetration to the interior of the target vehicle. The crew of the target vehicle hit by a solid penetrator is, of course, reduced to hamburger and colloidal slime—even when they aren’t sucked out of the exit hole by the vacuum created by the passage of the penetrator through the crew space of the vehicle. Although any electronics may have been rendered unusable as a result of an APSDFSDU hit, the rest of the vehicle may be intact, albeit messy.

Less dramatically, AFV break down or lose tracks fairly frequently. Due to the nature of the battlefield in East Germany during December, the Soviets may find themselves forced to abandon large numbers of fighting vehicles which are essentially serviceable. Support services among Soviet divisions are markedly inferior to those of Western divisions in terms of abundance (teeth-to-tail ratio) quality (fewer long-term professionals). So long as Soviet forces remain on the offensive, the follow-on forces can collect knocked out vehicles or those that have suffered breakdowns. When the Soviets are withdrawing, they will be incapable of recovering their vehicles to the same degree as their Western counterparts (who may not recover lots of vehicles, either). When III US, V US, VII US, I Br, and II Br Corps (including Canadian forces) roar across the Inter-German Border in early December ’96, they are going to hit Pact formations on the attack against West German defenders. The situation may not be a complete replay of Operation Desert Storm, but a lot of the aspects of the Gulf fighting will be recreated. The Anglo-American forces will be fresh. They will have massive air support operating from nearby friendly air bases. The enemy will be tired from seven weeks of hard fighting. It’s going to be a bad, if brief, period for Reds. NATO will recover a lot of fighting vehicles that would be fully operable except for an engine in need of servicing, a broken track or damaged wheel/axle, a dead crew (and a small hole in the armor), or simply an empty gas tank.

Sorting all of the captured Pact gear out is going to be a gargantuan task. In all likelihood, vehicles will have to be moved to marshaling points, categorized, and moved onward. The fact that trucks, trailers, and trains are going to have to move westward after delivering their materiel to the front lines offers an opportunity to move all of this hardware, provided that the loading and unloading of the hardware does not seriously impede the process of getting the tools of war forward in January, February, and March. I haven’t considered many of the details of this part of the process.

Back in the US, the cash motive may prompt the DoD and applicable contractors to find space for refitting captured Pact vehicles into the flow chart governing the use of skilled labor. Come December, the US is going to be in the war full-time. The losses in Germany, over Western Europe, and at sea will be vastly greater than the losses endured during Operation Desert Storm. The US government is going to have to pay for a lot of hardware. Payments from China will dry up because production for China will probably come to a screeching halt in December, if not in October. Refitted Pact gear can be sold for cash or kind to China and other Third World players. These sales will in no way offset the massive expenditures the US will undertake. However, every little bit does help.

The Russian language labels inside the vehicles will have to be replaced, for sure. I’m confident a fairly expedient solution can be found, though. Stickers and stamped sheet metal with English labels will be fairly easy to manufacture compared to some of the other challenges that await.

Lack of familiarity with the vehicles will be an obstacle for refitters in the US to overcome, for sure. Translating operators’ and maintenance manuals into English will be the first challenge, although this too is probably an issue of lesser significance. Typesetting and publishing aren’t especially difficult in 1997. Getting good translations in a timely fashion will be somewhat more challenging; however, it may be that the appropriate manuals already have been acquired and translated prior to the US entrance into the war. The Chinese will have captured some of the gear and manuals in 1995 and 1996. Surely the US would have obtained copies of these manuals and translated them already. It might be a good exercise for Russian linguists.

I foresee the captured Pact vehicles being segregated by type into massive parks where cannibalization can occur on an industrial level. While this is happening, civilian technicians can become familiar with the vehicles. Specifications for the most needed parts can be drawn up and submitted to machine shops around the country while assembly lines are being planned.

Sadly for this grand scheme, the nuclear exchange begins in July and catches up with CONUS in November. Some users, like Nellis AFB, will have received complements of vehicles. For the most part, though, the captured AFV will be rusting in Germany, the Netherlands, or in ad hoc depots in North America and the UK. Lack of parts and skilled labor will create a tight bottleneck in the process of restoring captured Pact vehicles to operable condition.

Webstral