Sources: direct source that says scrapping of retired tanks starts in 2011
http://economy.mil.ru/economy/news/m...1010744@egNews
If you see various years "military balance" you can see that T55 and T62 are falling year to year
CFE treaty listed around 1000 t55 and t62 but in storage! Pratically waiting 2011 scrapping ( there are some photos too)
Unfortunately a lot of sources about old russian tanks disappeared from the internet, specially russian sources like warfare.be
http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/ar...begins-6208-6/
Defencetalk well documented (
from disappeared internet sites) post says that t55 were retired in 1994 - > historically correct because in '94 the old soviet equipment from ex WP countries was totally retired
So two options: retire both tanks in 2011
retire t55 in '94 and retire t62 in 2011 but only because it was in service with MVD ( interior ministry) forces, and only in some cases, for sure t62 saw combat in both chechen wars and 2008 Georgia war, t55 not
The only sure thing we all can see is that fighting in QB's and generated campaigns, Abrams against old russian tanks, in modern times, is unrealistic