Another part of the equation is that most Soviet aircraft (especially early generations) were intended to be used together with ground radar support. They were primarily designed to be part of a coordinated defense to protect the motherland. They could still be used offensively of course, but functioned less well in that role.
The RD-180 was pretty much the best rocket engine around until fairly recently. The US never used them in manned missions because they deemed them less reliable. But that’s debatable.
Radial keratotomy was invented and perfected by the Soviets. Their eye institutes were the best from the 70s through the 90s, until PRK and LASIK matured and became the standard methods for micro-eye surgery.
In the 1980s and 1990s der Bronstein (the German-language version of the Handbook of Mathematics, originally by two Russian authors) was the canonical mathematical reference for West German engineers (don‘t know about mathematicians). You could solve almost all solvable integrals using the Bronstein.
Yep, as another German EE, who started college in 1989 I can attest this. The Bronstein was also quite cheap, because it was printed in the GDR. I still have my copy somewhere, but haven’t looked into it for decades.
There was also the fact that the Soviets could make a lot more of them tanks. Same with the space hardware. The assembly line rolls right out to the launch pad. As Stalin observed: “Quantity has a quality all its’ own.”
The USA “could have” matched Soviet armor production– if we were willing to put the USA on a permanent war mobilization footing and regiment both the economy and society to a degree the public would have condemned as tyrannical; a consideration the Soviets didn’t worry about. In the long run maintaining a market economy largely undistorted by military spending paid off in advancements Soviet society simply couldn’t copy, such as the rise of PCs and electronic data sharing. (In the USSR, photocopiers were monitored by the KGB).
File this under making a virtue of necessity. The USA has a long coastline and extensive navigable rivers for large barge traffic; for Russia the Volga is largely it. Anything too large to fit through the dimension limits of the Soviet rail system had to be manufactured on site.
I recall reading that at low speed, Soviet jets like the Fulcrum and Flanker were more optimized for close-in air-to-air combat with more maneuverability due to good AoA performance, Cobra maneuver, LERXes and whatnot. Of course, the problem for them was that before they could get into close-range combat, the NATO jets had the upper hand in BVR combat first.
They are here too, though not by the KGB. At least, if you try to photocopy US currency. Every unit (or so I’ve heard anyway) has some sort of unique identifier code, and some way of determining someone is trying to do their part to stimulate the very local economy.
The helmet-mounted sight and the R‑73 (AA‑11 Archer) missiles were radically superior to anything the West had in the 1980s. They came as a massive shock after the Wall fell and Germany inherited East German versions.
They were better in almost every conceivable way to the AIM-9M. They had a helmet-mounted sight that let the pilot look at an aircraft and fire a missile, had much better range, had a much better seeker, and were much more maneuverable.
You are probably thinking of this: EURion constellation - Wikipedia. Which is a way for photocopiers or scanners to recognize currency and refuse to copy it. That is 100% real. And dates back to the mid 1990s, roughly 30 years ago now.
I’ve only heard CT level BS about copiers “phoning home” to the relevant law enforcement folks if they detect an attempt at copying currency.
The whole V-PVO (Soviet Air-defense arm) tactics were for tight ground control vectoring, and not a lot of pilot discretion. And the plane designs tended to reflect this.
But ultimately, the Soviets had a different philosophy with regard to maintenance, etc… and that was that an airplane/tank/etc… had to be extremely rugged for a limited time under field conditions and indifferent, conscript maintenance. Largely everything else was secondary to this.
Contrast this with the Western approach where the expectation was for the equipment to be used a LOT in peacetime, maintained by trained personnel, and to be actually very good at what they were meant to do.
Take the AK-47. It’s an intermediate cartridge rifle that’s renowned for its dependability and ruggedness. But it’s NOT accurate at all. Meanwhile, the West fielded rifles with the expectation that their troops would maintain them well, and they’re generally very accurate as well. And remained so (more or less) after tens of thousands of peacetime rounds.
