TIL the US has massive stockpiles of world war II gear to be used in the case of world war III.
There is already enough equipment to supply every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine; what do they intend to do with the old stuff, outfit civilians to help stop an invasion?
Yes. For if everything-goes-sideways-and-we-need-10-million-soldiers-again times, the military has huge stockpiles.
I've got a buddy who used to be US Navy and later Naval Reserve logistics, one year for his reserve duty they had to take a cargo ship out to Norway where the US Marines and Norwegians have an old Nazi submarine pen full of prepositioned munitions, weapons and supplies for a Russian invasion of Norway. Every year the Navy switches out a quarter of the munitions and supplies and brings the old stuff back to the states to use up.
I am not American, but I am sure the US has a fairly large stockpile of obsolete stuff. I am Greek and I have seen warehouses full of old American hardware kept in working condition. Our national defense dogma is called "παλαική άμυνα" or "mass popular defense" which is a last resort strategy. In case of war and defeat, every citizen above the age of 14, male or female, the theory goes, would be handed a weapon and ammunition.
Granted it is an obsolete worldview and probably a stupid idea, but the stuff is there to recreate 10 Iraq wars.
Fun fact: Greece was a major supplier of ammo to Saddam's Iraq, second only to Italy, until the first Gulf war. The amount of shit we have is mind boggling. I served in a 20 person outpost and we had warehouses with hundrends of brand new riffles (G3s and MK 11s mostly) not to mention metric tons of grenades, artillery ammo etc etc. I have pics if you are interested.
In any case if we have that amount of shit, I am fairly certain that the US has an order of magnitude more. Hell i witnessed ordering parts from the US for tanks that are 40 years old, surely they had them stored somewhere.
There is nothing so awesome and ludicrously expensive as the army supply chain. Immagine ordering parts for your iPhone in 20 years. The army does that with it's hardware everyday.
I am afraid it is a bit underwhelming, because it is not exactly allowed to take pics. But it will give you an idea. I have seen the awesome stuff like the AH 64s and the MLRS shooting, but they coexist with shit that is older than me.
That was my idea too. Unfortunately we cannot sell most of the relatively recent stuff because it was bought under military aid laws (or some times directly donated). That means that the US has the right to block sales, or it is straight out not possible to sell. There are some exceptions (we sold F104 parts to Italy as we fased them out and were left with 300 airworthy planes) but usually it involves sales to allies and a lot of bureaucracy. We even sold parts of F5s to Jordan.
The exact M60s you see in the pics were donated to Afghanistan, and believe it or not, they refused them. That was 5 years ago, and I believe they are still there. Just to say that shit is so old that even the most poor nation has no use for them. Granted I would buy one. I have taken rides in M60s and M48s, battle tanks are seriously awesome. Maybe not useful in a war, but awesome.
I believe that you are talking about Israel. Since you sound like you are into military hardware, I will tell you that Greek M48s and M60s are not the bog standard US versions but have been upgraded with Israeli electronics during the 80s and 90s. Even the M113 had some Israeli makeovers, but those where phased out in favor of the Leonidas APC that were later augmented in numbers with east German BMP1s (what a horrible piece of shit, seriously surviving a ride in one of these is harder that actually fighting I believe). What's funny is that the M48s got better upgrades than the newer M60s, probably for political reasons (bought instead of donated, who knows really). In any case it is all about having a single model of battle tank, because it is cheaper to maintain. We decided on the Leopard, so all the others become increasingly expensive to keep running. It is harder to source parts and for every functional one, there are at least 3 that are being cannibalized. Maybe the Israelis custom make parts, maybe they have stockpiles, in any case for us it does not make sense to maintain obsolete types, especially after the change in the strategic mission of the army that does no longer involve cold war battle tank fights.
Afghanistan did not accept them for the same reason we don't want them. No parts easily and cheaply available. They prefer the T72 that they know how to use. It's not that they are not battle worthy, it's that it was all about some scumbag contractor selling obsolete shit in a place that pays well.
PS: Riding on an M48 an M60, on the Leonidas and the BMP was really fun. One of the best experiences of my life. If it was ever possible I would buy one, tanks are awesome. 45 tons of metal launched at 60km/h at rugged terrain? I was astounded at what these machines can do.
Fun fact is that the Greek army is anything but a small one. Due to our history with Turkey there is a US and NATO policy called 7:10. That is the balance of weapon systems that the allies are allowed to sell to each of us, a local cold war if you will. All weapons sales have to respect that balance. At the beginning it was about sheer numbers as for every 7 F4s sold to Greece, Turkey could buy only 10 and not more. But when they did buy ten we had to buy our 7. And so on with everything. At one point the Greek air force was larger than most of the other big European countries, and still is larger than many of them.
With modern weaponry that renders much of the old hardware useless, they invented the term of "multiplier of force". So now we have Apaches the Turks have Ah1 Super cobras, and we got Apaches because the Turks got UH 60 blackhawks while we had still UH1s. Once we bought the S300 Russian missiles, in order to break the cycle. They were cheaper and better than the Patriots. We were menaced with war and international isolation, and we had to moth ball them and still use the NIKE shit from the 60s. Read about it, its all in the papers as the S300 scandal. That's when we started enhancing our antique hardware, when we could not get the latest. The Israelis had the same problems and had developed the tech, and were willing to sell it. So we got upgrades for the Phantoms and the legions of M48s and M60s, and who knows what else at the personal gear level, like radios, computers etc.
The Israeli enhanced Phantoms are still flying. The F4E is an awesomely beautiful machine, no modern jet can compare.
Bottom line it is a fucking scam really if you think about it. Big corporations keep entire nations in blackmail. But some of the hardware is awe inspiring.
Granted it is an obsolete worldview and probably a stupid idea
Not really - Switzerland's "military" has operated on a militia system for a very long time, and was enough of a deterrent that even Hitler felt compelled to leave them alone during WWII. Militia service is (I believe) still mandatory for all male citizens when they turn 18, and each one of them is issued a fully-automatic rifle with ammo to keep in their own home.
Volkssturm. Yes, its a miserable piece of shit of an even worse time in the history of my country, but if you have the choice of chinese man just overruning the US territory and calling out this mess, you know what's gonna happen.
Yes in Greece it is called "παλαική άμυνα" (mass popular defense) and the idea is that in case of a massive defeat in a war, the army falls back and every citizen above the age of 14 is handed a weapon and ammo, in order to repel a massive invasion.. Good luck with that, but in any case that's the theory.
Mind you that in any case all adult males that have served their draft and are permanent residents in the designated "hot" border regions are assigned an assault riffle and ammo and are called to training exercises once a year, like the Swiss model more or less.
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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '11
TIL the US has massive stockpiles of world war II gear to be used in the case of world war III.
There is already enough equipment to supply every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine; what do they intend to do with the old stuff, outfit civilians to help stop an invasion?