Here's What Is Going to Happen With Ukraine

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

There's been a good bit of stuff that never really worked at all. We just had to pretend that it did...

That was the difference. In the west, we all assumed it did all work, and we assumed the Soviets had stuff we had not even seen yet, that worked even better. That is why we had places like KMR, where we made sure the Russian "fishing trawlers" were close enough to see how well we did things, even though at times we did a little pretending ourselves.

Edited March 5, 2014 by The Postmaster

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

And it is true, we were a lot farther along in many more fields than the Soviets were, and not quite as far ahead in some fields as we though we were.

[deleted-05292014 331]

They don't build fine sophisticated equipment - they build stuff that works and continues to work, under less than ideal conditions. You would surprised how many US weapon systems are based on Soviet designs, every bit as much as the Soviets copied ours, and made them actually function. Soviets were the innovators in rotary wing aircraft.

Yeah very true. Early days of the Vietnam war when our M-16s were not holding up under the jungle conditions the VC had an edge with their Russian made AK-47s because they could stand up to the conditions.