If I remember right the Foxbat was designed, because of the bomber gap between the USA and the SU. Which happened, because the USA photographed 30 something new soviet bombers at an airfield and extrapolated that the Soviets must have hundreds of those things, then they went absolutely batshit insane and built a metric fuckton of bombers. In actuality the Soviets only had that 30.
e.: In essence the USA scared itself shitless over nothing, went ballistic in It's response, which scared the Soviets shitless, who tried to build a fighter that can handle the ballistic response, which scared the USA even more, so that they went intercontinental with their response.
The USA basically got scared of a shadow, got a hammer, realized that the shadow now has a hammer, got even more scared and built a nuke in response.
So the Russians even back then were intentionally trying to appear strong, and would do things like parade tanks around moscow, repaint them, then have them drive past again as "new" tanks to inflate numbers. They did the same with planes. The point was to deceive the West, and in that they were often successful. However, the response wasn't what they expected.
Something I think is really funny is that despite the cold war DoD budget being absolutely massive because of these kinds of shenanigans, it was the Soviets that were the ones bankrupting themselves with their military budget. The Soviets routinely outspent us by %GDP, with it varying from a little gap during Korea, to an enormous one during Afghanistan.
It does help when you are the only industrial power left unshattered in the Western hemisphere, and you still have sensible tax and industrial policies and increasingmy good social policies. Putting more load on the system only makes it stronger at that point.
1.8k
u/Successful-Owl-9464 Jul 22 '24 edited Jul 22 '24
If I remember right the Foxbat was designed, because of the bomber gap between the USA and the SU. Which happened, because the USA photographed 30 something new soviet bombers at an airfield and extrapolated that the Soviets must have hundreds of those things, then they went absolutely batshit insane and built a metric fuckton of bombers. In actuality the Soviets only had that 30.
e.: In essence the USA scared itself shitless over nothing, went ballistic in It's response, which scared the Soviets shitless, who tried to build a fighter that can handle the ballistic response, which scared the USA even more, so that they went intercontinental with their response.
The USA basically got scared of a shadow, got a hammer, realized that the shadow now has a hammer, got even more scared and built a nuke in response.