Visitors walk around tanks and armoured vehicles on display at Army-2015. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
Kyle Mizokami, National Interest: How the Pentagon Exaggerated Russia’s Cold War Super Weapons
Many, many years ago, I was in junior high school and was deeply nerdy about military matters. Information was hard to come by in those days before the Internet, and people like me were limited to what books and magazines were available at the time.
One day I went to my local federal building to look for a particular book. It was propaganda released by the Department of Defense. Although I was in high school, I was savvy enough to know it was propaganda; it was going to be something to read just like anything else. It was Soviet Military Power.
Soviet Military Power was an annual book released by the Pentagon that explained the alleged growth and technical abilities of the Soviet armed forces. It was also an attempt to justify Pres. Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup by presenting the Pentagon’s version of the U.S.-Soviet military rivalry.
That narrative was, “We’re outnumbered, we’re outgunned, and they’re catching up on our technological lead.” It was a call to action.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The Pentagon was not the only guilty party exaggerating what the other side had. Living on the other side I sometimes wondered if the Kremlin was exaggerating U.S. Cold War super weapons .... which I now know they were.
1 comment:
It's actually "funny", the US and NATO exaggerated and made up Soviet weapons capabilities and numbers to feed the "gravy train",
The Soviets exaggerated US and NATO weapons and capabilities out of "ignorance". The Soviet's "estimated" US NATO weapons, capabilities and intents, because they did not understand the political system of the West, the NATO relationship, the strategic goals of the military, the tactical relationships of the Forces, etc, and assumed that Western structures would act like Soviet structures.
As one example, the Stakva assumed that NATO would have the same subordinate role as the Warsaw Pact would, and so, the absence of Joint US NATO Offensive Conventional War Plans, simply meant that the US had not shared the plans with NATO.
The Soviet Problem regarding exaggerating US NATO capabilities was a Mars/Venus Problem,
The Western Problem regarding exaggerating Soviet capabilities was that it was just too damn profitable.
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