>>64489255
>They were sufficiently accurate in terms of rough numbers fielded. The Russians just fucked up in actually making good use of what they had, then and now.
These things are directly related - you can't field soviet numbers(which were in turn inflated by western intelligence and soviet corruption) without making sacrifices on operational readiness, keeping equipment up to date or fielding enough trained personnel. coupled with the political squabbles taking precedence over standartization and the general atrocious state of soviet logistics which soviets planned to overcome through sheer spam of disposable single-use units with a life expectancy of several hours at best and you can directly deduce the current and historical atrocious performance of soviet troops and eqipment when used beyond instantly swarming an unmotivated and underequipped enemy using overwhelming numbers and having secret police mop up remaining disorganized resistance.
>And in fact if we had been laissez faire about it we wouldn't have built the smart weapons that did eventually help us turn the tide.
that's true and i'm not saying that those efforts were wasted or that spooking politicians into militarizing is wrong. it's just sensible to recognize a hoax as that, especially since those days are long past.