In Defense of the Red Army

[RN7]

During the Cold War the Soviet Union could build as many tanks, fighter aircraft and nuclear armed ballistic missiles as it wanted to compete with America and the Western world, but as sea it was just simply out classed by the US Navy no matter how hard it tried to compete with it.

The Soviet Union or Russia was never considered to be a leading naval power at any era over the past two centuries, and at best it was one of the following pack of major powers with a navy that was barely ranked among the top five or lower. In both world wars its naval contribution to the wars was meagre compared to its own army and the other powers. After WW2 the Soviet Union found itself as the second most powerful country in the world, but the so called rise of its navy was also due to the practical elimination of German, Japanese and Italian naval ambitions, and the contraction of the British and French fleets due to decolonisation and economic realities.

At no point in the Cold War was the Soviet Navy a match for the US carrier fleet and the accumulative decades of American naval experience and technology. In fact until the 1970's the British Navy could even be considered to be a major threat to it until Britain decided to wind down its own naval ambitions and practically scrap its aircraft carrier fleet. The only way the Soviets could try and neutralise the threat of US carriers was by following the same route that Germany tried in both world wars when it was also outclassed by Western naval powers; submarines, and also with long ranged bombers with supersonic cruise missiles.

The Soviet carrier fleet offered little threat to US Navy carriers, and its carriers were in fact ASW platforms with a few VTOL jets of limited capabilities. The reason why Soviet ships and carriers had so many anti-ship, air defence and ASW weapons was because the Soviets recognised and were intimidated by the threat posed by the US Navy and particularly US naval aviation.