In Defense of the Red Army

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Some call it thread necromancy, I call it "revisiting the topic"

After reading through dragoon500ly's post about Soviet equipment and then going back here to reread his thoughts, I am in full agreement with Raellus. Many people too easily dismiss the Soviet Union and the Red Army.

With the benefit of the internet it's easy to find better information about Soviet equipment and better still, with online translation programmes, we can now view a number of Russian sites that give details previously unavailable in the West. One such site has three items of interest, two in particular that could have given NATO something of a surprise.
The following are Google Translate links so be prepared for some weird English.

The ZSU-37-2 This was a contemporary to the ZSU-23-4 with a longer engagement range and meant to support tank regiments. Discontinued from development for unspecified reasons (but probably because the ZSU-23-4 performed better on high-speed targets at lower altitudes)
http://translate.google.com/translat...ate.google.com

The T-74 A proposal for a small-turret tank mounting an external gun. Development ceased due to technical complexity driving up the price of development and production.
http://translate.google.com/translat...ate.google.com

The VAG-73 caseless ammunition pistol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerasimenko_VAG-73
http://translate.google.com/translat...Fdogswar.ru%2F

There's also the series of 9x39mm silent weapons developed in the late 1980s (VSS Vintorez, AS Val), various weapons for combat divers (ASM-DT, ADS), the very well developed work on variable geometry afterburner nozzles (along with the supersonic VTOL Yak-41M AKA Yak-141), other rifles to replace the AK/AKM series (such as the TKB-0146 bullpup or the AO-38 rifle, the first to use the 'Balanced Automatic Recoil System, other link here or the Soviet equivalent to Project SALVO such as the TKB-059, the Kamov V-100 project for a high-speed attack helicopter, the Mil Mi-30 tilt-rotor project, the 80.002 combination assault rifle & grenade launcher and so on.

I hope that what's illustrated here is that the Soviets were not simply sitting back and constantly improving old designs to try and hold out against the West, but that they too indulged in a varied R&D programme to explore other ideas in an effort to compete and maybe beat, the West.
I'm not saying that the Soviets would have easily beaten NATO or even that they could have beaten NATO at all but I am saying that measuring the Soviet Union by the standards of the Gorbachev era leads to an easy dismissal of their abilities.