It's worth recalling how very little we knew about Soviet intentions and
capabilities, even in the 1980s, after a decade or so of Nixon-Kissinger
detente and make-nice Carterism.
An example illustrating this is the following exchange from March, 1982, during
a Congressional hearing before the House Armed Services Committee between
Samuel S. Stratton (D-NY) and Army Maj. Gen. James P. Maloney, regarding the
Soviet T-80 tank:

Stratton: Is this tank a real tank or is this a notional tank?
Maloney: The T-80, sir?
Stratton: I thought that was what you were telling us about.
Maloney: The T-80 at this time is more than notional. We believe it is
beginning to come off their production lines.
Stratton: But you haven't seen it and you don't have a picture of it?
Maloney: That is correct, sir.
Stratton: You don't know how it is configured?
Maloney: We have indications generally of how it is configured, but we don't
have any detail on it.
Stratton: It is kind of hard to figure on that basis.
Maloney: May I explain how we estimate what the tank is capable of doing? We
get the best tank experts in four of the NATO countries, including our own, to
independently come up with their estimate of what the T-80 is going to be like
based on extrapolations of what we have seen the Soviets do in the past. We
then merge these four studies to come up with our composite estimate of what
the T-80 will be. So, you know, it is not just based on whimsey."
Stratton: In other words, a scientific wild-ass guess. That's what you are
telling this committee?
Maloney: You could put it that way, yes, sir.

And so it was, along with just about everything else we knew about the USSR
when it came not only to capabilities but intentions.
Stratton who was quite skeptical and harsh with Maloney and other witnesses,
was not, as some might want to believe, a pacifist leftie. During WW2 he was a
Naval Combat Intelligence officer on Gen. MacArthur's staff in the SWPA and was
awarded two Bronze Stars with Combat V. He was chief interrogator of Japanese
Gen. Tomoyuki Yama****a and gathered the information that led to his hanging as
a war criminal. During the Korean War he was recalled to duty and served as an
instructor at the Naval Intelligence School in Washington, D.C. He was
certainly a patriot, but he had a very effective BS detector.
The discussion of the T-80 tank was part of a debate on whether the M-1 Abrams
tank should be deployed by the US, and if so, in what numbers. Many believed
the Soviet tank threat was overstated, if not largely bogus, and therefore
there was no need for the Abrams.
The Soviet tank threat may have been overstated. But if it was, and we
acknowleded it and did not deploy the Abrams, sticking with upgraded versions
of the M-60, would we be better off today, would we have been as successful as
we were in various stand-offs and fights over the last two decades?


Chris Mark