On the almost total destruction of the USN, I will say this: thanks to the Walker's treachery, the Soviets knew dangerous amounts of stuff about our Navy. Had there been a non-Nuclear (well, not immediately nuclear) shooting war we'd have been in for some horrible surprises vis-a-vis their defenses versus our technology. It isn't that they were technologically superior: they weren't. It's just that they knew so much about ours thanks to those pigs that they could have really crippled us out of the gate. That's one thing that I think needs to be taken into consideration.
We just didn't know until the KGB threw open their archives how badly we'd been compromised.
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