Pre-nuclear wartime production.

[rcaf_777]

If the west if already making items for China as they are first to fight the Russians, would you not see some plants alreay at full production and certians parts of the US industrial base may be already ramping up to meet demands.

[Apache6]

I think your underestimating the ability of the US to ramp up tank and ship production. "In order to maintain the industrial base," Congress has for a long time directed the Services (Army and Navy) to build ships and vehicles in U.S. plants and MUCH slower then necessary. The intent is to make it possible to keep the production lines open.

It results in slower production, and higher costs, but is intended to give the nation the ability to 'ramp up' for a major war.

A lesson learned from Desert Storm is that we (US Military) consumed precision guided munitions at a very high rate. In real world, this led to increased capacity to surge production (executed by the Goverment by writing it into contracts for producers), which was exercised/demonstrated in Bosnia Operations. During T2000K the increased production capability might just be starting to come on line around TDM.

Could led to an interesting adventure, when a PC group is tasked to go to the Lockheed Martin Plant in St Louis (and/or a rail siding just about anywhere) and recover and escort X number of semi trucks carrying Y number of Tomahawk Missiles or TOW missiles which were produced before TDM but unable to be shipped as they were 'lost' in post TDM confusion. They are vitally needed to help drive the Mexicans out of Texas.

I once GM'd a game where the PCs learned about and worked to recover a lot of prewar ordnance which was sitting 'dockside' in ISO containers when Breman was nuked. The area was heavily contaminated and the only one who knew where the munitions was a Army Logistics SgtMaj, blind due to nuclear flash, who was the operations chief at the logistics hub at the Port.

[Olefin]

Our GM when we did Last Submarine made a lot of the adventure about recovering torpedoes and other equipment and electronics to repair the SSN (which was already in government hands but had a non-functional weapons system and thus couldnt be used for war patrols or the mission overseas until it was repaired)

Actually thats one thing that the Challenge Magazine article on getting to the M1 tank plant in Ohio completely glossed over - sure there wasnt a bunch of tanks sitting there waiting to be grabbed by the players - but an intact tank plant would be a gold mine of spare parts,engines, armor plate, etc.. - especially since MilGov is probably sitting on as many as 100-200 M1 tanks that need repairs and they are back in operation if not more - 20 crated engines and transmissions, new barrels and a couple of truckloads of spare parts would be worth far more than one or two operational M1's

[rcaf_777]

The supply of tanks and surplus parts in the US might be a reason why the US agree to give up their tanks and AFV on departing from europe, minus key part of course.

I mean in CIV or MIL Gov has acess to some stockpiles, why not start making newish stuff.

This would also explain why the germans were keen to have them, as their means of production is gone.

[RN7]

Originally Posted by rcaf_777

The supply of tanks and surplus parts in the US might be a reason why the US agree to give up their tanks and AFV on departing from europe, minus key part of course. I mean in CIV or MIL Gov has acess to some stockpiles, why not start making newish stuff.

This would also explain why the germans were keen to have them, as their means of production is gone.

I dunno about Germany completely losing its tank production capability. Before the war the assembly lines for the Leopard 1 and 2 tanks was in Munich, Kiel and Kassel at various stages. Munich was a nuclear target, but I don't think Kassel and Kiel were.

[Olefin]

I think the US gave up as much equipment as they did primarily because outside of the Russian forces in Alaska and Texas there wasnt much need for heavy armor at home. The Mexican forces didnt have much left and what they had was basically mostly light armor

Now if they had known they were about to face a home grown enemy they may have changed their minds about that

Some of it as we discussed must have got sent to CENTCOM (thus explaining the larger tank numbers in the US units there after Omega and the reinforcements arrived from Europe as seen in the RDF Sourcebook) but they left the vast majority of it in the hands of the Germans - basically as compensation for taking what was left of the German and possibly the Danish merchant marine with them and for the oil necessary to get them all home.

[Olefin]

By the way one thing to keep in mind too is that the US Army Depots at places like Red River and Anniston would have been very busy trying to get as many older stored tanks as possible back into trim to be used by either our allies (M48's for the Turks for instance) or to be used as replacements or even to add some armor to the light divisions that were being formed - i.e. I would rather have a battalion of old M48 tanks to give me some armor than none at all.

And there were a significant amount of older tanks in the US that could have been used long before they had to start raiding museums to get armor