They were in the process of being moved to a military base....NOT, they were in the process of being robbed and then sold on the black market...

Originally posted by andy1972
They were in the process of being moved to a military base....NOT, they were in the process of being robbed and then sold on the black market...

I don't think so. If they were really being moved to another base, then why the investigation? Why was it taking over 4 months to move them?
I think there may have been a mid eastern element evolved here.

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk

I found this quite amusing. But on a serious note, if they leave their tanks hanging about so idily and unprotected what are the Russians like with their nuclear material?

It is (or was) in a terrible state, very very scary situation. The end of the cold war and the terrible economic conditions in Russia left their nuclear arsenal up to the highest bidder basically. Could be different now, probably is. The U.S. has been sending people over to Russia for the past 20 years trying to help them secure their nukes. Russia also has been coming to the U.S. to visit our sites to see how to better implement controls. The problem is that all those scientists who were employed by the Russian state (whole cities of them) were suddenly out of a job and, with the economy being so bad at the time, no employment anywhere for them so they also were up for bid to the highest bidder. Many went to work for rogue states. The situation in Russia in the last part of the 80's and early 90's contributed more to the proliferation of nuclear technology than any other factor.

This is fact.

[edit on 28/2/2010 by Iamonlyhuman]

Be nice to know if they have fuel in them and if there is any support vehicles left as well.

or - could they have parked for winter (covered with snow) awaiting spring and a solid forest cover to avoid overhead detection.

[edit on 28-2-2010 by Hose Monkey]

Intrigueing. Something was obviously planned for these tanks. Where are the crews, support vehicles etc. Maybe the Russians are going to support an invasion of Iran and not offer support to Iran if they are attacked.

This is one of those strange situations that are a huge piece of jig-saw to the "big picture". Im going to keep a close watch on this. S&F


Respects

I wonder if the unit simply ran out of money and walked home...?

Russian military has too much tanks. 20000 plus. Not to mention APCs and AFVs.
Each tank needs crew and even larger supporting stuff. Russian army has around 400000 people all in all. 20 per tank. So naturally vast majority of tanks are not operational.
Why it is not guarded? My bet that this transfer landed on local military commanders by surprise and without additional soldiers they choose to not pay attention. 200 twenty year old tanks is a lot in most countries in the world. But if you have another 19800 ......
Black market guys do not leave un-sheltered tanks in snow for months before sale. Kind of lower the price me thinks. However if it is army property this kind of mess sounds totally possible.

I wonder if you could live in a tank. I wish I had enough money to buy one of these they look cool.

Maybe its a boneyard, or they're on the way to a boneyard.

Just because they look operational doesn't mean they are. In fact, having spent the majority of my military career on tanks I would bet that after sitting in the woods for several months that all of them are inop, no matter the condition they arrived in. Tanks and cold don't get along. They don't like neglect either.

If there are no classified systems in the tank and the fire control system has been removed, there is no reason they couldn't just dump them in the woods. It can't shoot without the FCS. 200 dead tanks take up a lot of room, and if I was running a garrison I probably wouldn't want them sitting around taking up training space.

If they were staging for something I imagine the Russians would be lining up T90s. T72s are a bit dated. They don't hold up to the modern antiarmor munitions that are widely available today- RPG 29s and RKG 3s. Even lesser model RPGs can do them in. And they surely wouldn't commit a moderate sized 200 tank force anywhere that they would expect to encounter a modern MBT formation. For an example of what happens in such a case read up on the Battle of 73 Easting.

Indeed it appears someone is attempting to move a number of tanks but in a very quiet fashion. Where they are headed is the more important question I would ask and last but not least is the possibility that the tanks were placed as instructed exactly where they were found in order to disseminate a false cover story for something else more nefarious. Look here while you're not looking there. A distraction play by those that are using it to do something else.

The possibilities are many, but it is interesting that so many top line tanks would be there if not being sold to some buyer who prefers to be a silent partner type. A deal that just was hard to hide and in fact was discovered because it was a lot of tanks and probably represented a lot of money for someone selling the tanks.

A small bribe to the rail station masters and at certain rail hubs will most likely tell you exactly where these tanks end up. Let's hope that the Russians have reacquired what was perhaps taken without authority.

They could have also been there to ensure the tanks get to where they are going. Either way who knows. Could also be a preposition of tanks for a Russian Army that will go to where the tanks end up and crank up and attack their intended victims. Could be any number of things but it still boils down to just a handful of good plausible excuses.

Damn! There goes our plan to equip Zimbabwe farmers with decent vehicles to negotiate potholes and nasty landgrabbers!

Just wondering, were the keys left in the tanks?

You would think if russia has too many tanks they would sell them to other countries. Many people would buy them just as a collectors item.Moving the tanks to other countries would proberly cost too much.Just best to dump them in the forest and forget about them.That would be the cheaper option until some go missing.Well all you people in the russian marfia.There is money to be made here.Get moving.The collectors will pay hundreads of thousands for just one tank.

[edit on 1-3-2010 by GORGANTHIUM]