Military equipment during a continuous Cold War

Sport25ing

Sport25ing

With the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991, many military equipment and plans got cancelled due to be unedeed; therefore, the question:

Add the Cold War somehow continued (how? thats not part of the question), what equipment could have we seen been used today?

There more than just these one referenced (it just the ones that came up in my mind in less than 10 seconds):
  • M60-120S
  • H&K G11
  • "Super-Tomcat"
  • 152mm-armed T-80 tank
 

muskeg13

M2001 Crusader Howitzer
M8 Armored Gun System/light tank
M247 SGT York DIVAD (Improved)
8"/55 Naval Cannon on a new class of Gunfire Support Cruisers
Iowa Class Battleships retained longer
 
Catsmate

Catsmate

The A-12 enters service, after having vast sums ploughed into it's development?

Small arms wise:
The H&K caseless ammunition family, G-11, MG-11 and MP-11.
The Walther WA-2000 and H&K WSG-2000 sniper rifles.
FN's BRG-15 and ASP-30 supplement other heavy machine guns
The Colt, AAI and Steyr ACRs.
The various CAWS shotguns, H&K and AAI, plus Pancor.
The Sidewinder sub-machine gun supplants the MP-5.
More military interest in 10mm Auto and more weapons.
Earlier military deployment of PDWs for secondary personnel in carbibe, machine pistol and pistol-carbine formats.
 

Thoresby

Catsmate said:
The Colt, AAI and Steyr ACRs.
Click to expand...

You're definitely not getting all three and I doubt you'd get one. A continued Cold War means a greater emphasis on "Big War" and that means small arms are going to see less interest and development then they have in OTL.

Something else that will live longer and be fully developed is the Soviet's Buran Orbiter and associated Energia rocket system while not strictly military the Soviet Space Program was heavily military and the system will have a military role as a delivery system for military space assets and possibly on orbit maintenance. A continuing Cold War is going need to a pre 1987 PoD so Polyus might succeed but if it doesn't the Soviets will almost certainly continue developing their anti-Star Wars program and a Polyus 2 will follow.
On the US side Star Wars is definitely continuing though possibly at a lower level of funding and that in turn makes some kind of Shuttle II/X-30/X-33/NASP new Reusable Launch Vehicle much more likely to receive funding though it won't result in anything operational until/unless they give up SSTO.
 

Cryhavoc101

All 9 Upholder class subs are built and fully worked up

OTL only 4 were completed and never really fully worked up with only one deploying anywhere - HMS Unicorn spending 6 months East of Suez and only in 'service' for a short time before being paid off
 

Cryhavoc101

Red_Legion123@ said:
the project was so expensive that there will be fewer machines anyway
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There was a certain economy of scale thing going on.

Cost per airframe is always going to be higher with such a small estate where fewer airframes have to absorb the RandD as well as infrastructure costs over potentially 130 odd!
 

New Cleo Genesis

The Joseph Metcalf arsenal ship proposal never really even got off the ground, so it was never cancelled per se, but I'll suggest it nevertheless. At least it would've looked cool:

tRK4Vv8uqDlgNj4-AvKobBRV0flzUesDVNr2yy8Esr8.jpg
 

Bougnas

Yep, and it's known that continued F-22 production would have yielded basically "free" aircrafts.

The main incentive for minimizing production numbers is usually:
- limiting manpower usage
- limiting infrastructures
- limiting production capacity

But per se you don't save much money cutting production if you have the opportunity to replace an old design instead, like F-22 replacing F-15. But labor politics can play in favor of no full replacement if for example congressmen want the Boeing F-15 production line to survive (while LM got the F-35 line to replace the lost F-22 one).

Ofc, these arguments don't work as well in a CW scenario.
 

Mike D

For the British Army, both Challenger 2 and Warrior would have been upgraded long before now in a continued Cold War - I'd expect the gun replacement programmes on Warrior to have started in the early 2000s (about 15 years into service) and early 2010s on CR2 (again, about 15 years). Both will get associated sensor upgrades at the same time.
 

Gunnarnz

New Cleo Genesis said:
The Joseph Metcalf arsenal ship proposal never really even got off the ground, so it was never cancelled per se, but I'll suggest it nevertheless. At least it would've looked cool:

tRK4Vv8uqDlgNj4-AvKobBRV0flzUesDVNr2yy8Esr8.jpg
Click to expand...
Way I heard it, equipping even one arsenal ship with a full load of missiles would have seriously depleted stocks. There's a lot of money floating around in one of those, and if they enter service you're also looking at a significantly increased cost for scaling up missile production.
 
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