Defense and Technology Supplement: What Ever Happened to The Red Army?

IN the good old days (or bad, depending on whether you were sitting in the Kremlin or the White House) there was a fearsome military machine known collectively as the Red Army. The Cold War was on and the existence of that fearsome machine appeared to threaten to turn it into a hot one, generally thought of as the “nuclear holocaust.” (Those were somewhat emotional days.)

One could never rule out the possibility that some maniac in the Kremlin might press the fatal button, but the possibility of a “holocaust” was probably remote. Until 1977-78, that is. In that period, the Soviet Union started deploying a sophisticated Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) called the SS-20, which was capable of destroying all NATO’s military installations in, say, 45 minutes. Because the SS-20 could not have reached U.S. targets, it did not qualify for the strategic ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) label: a dangerous terminological slip.

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Brian Crozier

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IN the good old days (or bad, depending on whether you were sitting in the Kremlin or the White House) there was a fearsome military machine known collectively as the Red Army. The Cold War was on and the existence of that fearsome machine appeared to threaten to turn it into a hot one, generally thought of as the “nuclear holocaust.” (Those were somewhat emotional days.)

One could never rule out the possibility that some maniac in the Kremlin might press the fatal button, but the possibility of a “holocaust” was probably remote. Until 1977-78, that is. In that period, the Soviet Union started deploying a sophisticated Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) called the SS-20, which was capable of destroying all NATO’s military installations in, say, 45 minutes. Because the SS-20 could not have reached U.S. targets, it did not qualify for the strategic ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) label: a dangerous terminological slip.