Most overrated weapon of the Cold War

[Hammerbolt]

Tbh, I'd start by asking how/what does the OP mean by "overated"? If something is built but never used can it be "overated"?

Nukes were the entire reason why the war never went "hot", so I can't acept being overated. And "capable of destroying only 40 per cent of the industrial potential of each of the United States and the Soviet Union"? Not only I very much doubt that, it also leaves the little issues of the efects on Europe, Middle East, China, Japan... not to mention the clouds of radioative dust.

The F-14 did very well in service in Iran, so I can't acept that count. The F-16 was not designed original to carry long range AAMs, so one can't called it "overated" on that issue alone.

I'd say the A-10 was overated. Good and tough? Yes. Good for generic air support? Yes. The "omg kills all wins war alone" that it's fans seem to think it is? No.

 

[Fries]

And "capable of destroying only 40 per cent of the industrial potential of each of the United States and the Soviet Union"?

Also, "only 40%" is still a huge number. The USSR and USA were undoubtedly two of the most industrialized and powerful countries in human history, let alone modern history, and 40% of, say, a million (to just throw out a random number) is still 400,000.

 

[sarge]

For the West? Absolutely the A-10 and it's 30mm "tank killing" cannon.
For the East? This one isn't easy. Perhaps the AK-47 and derivatives. It is a outstanding rifle and a personal favourite. But it's reliability has been overrated a bit... every firearm requires maintenance and cleaning for optimal function. The FN FAL was also pretty tough and rugged.

 

[Father Maryland]

The real answer: Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow. If you believe Canadian nationalists and all the other people who get hyped on "what if" military projects that never panned out, the Arrow was the greatest breakthrough in aeronautics since the Wright Brothers, a weapon to win the Cold War single-handedly, there were even actually TLs here about how it'd be a competitive air superiority fighter well into the modern day.

In reality, it was a dedicated interceptor built after the superpowers figured out that dedicated interceptors were obsolete. It would've had the performance of an F-106 Delta Dart, an aircraft that first took flight 2 years before the Arrow did and had a bland, uneventful career. Literally the only thing worth noting about the Arrow was that it was built in Canada, that's it.

Ehh I think the CF105 bull is the result of two things

A) it's a pretty aircraft
B) Canadian nationalists have latched on to it as part of a grand scheme where the US evilly stole Canada's place in the sun.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

Ehh I think the CF105 bull is the result of two things

A) it's a pretty aircraft
B) Canadian nationalists have latched on to it as part of a grand scheme where the US evilly stole Canada's place in the sun.

It's mostly B. You see the same thing with the Osorio MBT (which I didn't mention because it's basically late/post-Cold War) where Brazil of all countries managed to build an MBT (by buying off-the-shelf parts from other countries and putting them together in a poorly armored package) and Brazilian nationalists and others act like it was outright superior to M1A1 and would've proliferated international markets if not for perfidious American interference.

 

[sparky42]

The real answer: Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow. If you believe Canadian nationalists and all the other people who get hyped on "what if" military projects that never panned out, the Arrow was the greatest breakthrough in aeronautics since the Wright Brothers, a weapon to win the Cold War single-handedly, there were even actually TLs here about how it'd be a competitive air superiority fighter well into the modern day.

In reality, it was a dedicated interceptor built after the superpowers figured out that dedicated interceptors were obsolete. It would've had the performance of an F-106 Delta Dart, an aircraft that first took flight 2 years before the Arrow did and had a bland, uneventful career. Literally the only thing worth noting about the Arrow was that it was built in Canada, that's it.

If you added in the TSR2 you could manage to piss off everyone of those people...

 

[iddt3]

Are we talking overrated at the time or in retrospect?

Guided missiles as a whole turned out to be important, but they didn't make tanks irrelevant. The whole gun/launcher rabbithole America went down during the 60s and 70s.

In my personal opinion, the most overrated weapon of the Cold War was the nuclear weapon: claimed to be capable of destroying human civilization and the ecosystem when launched in their entirety, they were in fact capable of destroying only 40 per cent of the industrial potential of each of the United States and the Soviet Union, even in 1970, when their numbers were at their peak.

Calling the biggest gamechangers in warfare "overrated" is certainly a take. They fundamentally changed warfare and geopolitics post war. Heck, and image of a rising mushroom cloud is pretty much visual shorthand for the apocalypse. The lack of use is pretty incidental given their impact merely from existing.

Nuclear power turned out to be pretty overrated I guess. We never got anywhere near "too cheap to meter".

What do people overrate retroactively? The A 10 is certainly an overrated system, but it's not like it hasn't done a decent, if unexceptional, job as a Maverick Missile truck. The Soviet Army in general is probably somewhat overrated.

 

[Monk78]

In a WP. -NATO war the whole concept of a “air superiority fighter” seems overrated to me
They cannot stop the ballistic missiles which will be unleashed as soon as the war goes nuclear. So they are useful only IF a big war stays conventional and even then the SARH missiles limit their potential esp against an enemy that significantly outnumbers them.

They are perfect though for Gulf war style conflagrations

 

[Monk78]

Are we talking overrated at the time or in retrospect?

Guided missiles as a whole turned out to be important, but they didn't make tanks irrelevant. The whole gun/launcher rabbithole America went down during the 60s and 70s.

Calling the biggest gamechangers in warfare "overrated" is certainly a take. They fundamentally changed warfare and geopolitics post war. Heck, and image of a rising mushroom cloud is pretty much visual shorthand for the apocalypse. The lack of use is pretty incidental given their impact merely from existing.

Nuclear power turned out to be pretty overrated I guess. We never got anywhere near "too cheap to meter".

What do people overrate retroactively? The A 10 is certainly an overrated system, but it's not like it hasn't done a decent, if unexceptional, job as a Maverick Missile truck. The Soviet Army in general is probably somewhat overrated.

Myth of all conquering Soviet army yes definitely overrated even without all the hindsight we have today

 

[Pelranius]

It's mostly B. You see the same thing with the Osorio MBT (which I didn't mention because it's basically late/post-Cold War) where Brazil of all countries managed to build an MBT (by buying off-the-shelf parts from other countries and putting them together in a poorly armored package) and Brazilian nationalists and others act like it was outright superior to M1A1 and would've proliferated international markets if not for perfidious American interference.

That sounds like the Arjun (the Indian MBT), though the Arjun is armored to up the wazoo and has some more domestic content.

Don't get me wrong, it s a great tank- if you intend to be fighting on the Northern European Plain.

 

[Monk78]

That sounds like the Arjun (the Indian MBT), though the Arjun is armored to up the wazoo and has some more domestic content.

Don't get me wrong, it s a great tank- if you intend to be fighting on the Northern European Plain.

What makes the plains of Punjab so different?

 

[aaronupright]

The 80s Iowa recall was less about using them for naval gunfire support and more because they were fast, in decent shape, had long range, and were large enough that they could have a bunch of Tomahawks and Harpoons put aboard.

True.

For a bit the 4 Iowas made up like half of the Tomahawk capacity of the fleet.

Not sure about this. They certainly had the numbers but since Wisconsin only got recommissioned in 1988 (after what was essentially a rebuild of its electrical and electronic systems and modification of its propulsion) and Iowa was out of service soon after, I don't think it ever actually happened.

What makes the plains of Punjab so different?

Nothing, the point is that its not the only sector and the units and formations equipped with it would be committed there. There is also an open question whether in the Indo-Pak equation, such heavy armour is necessarily desirable at the expense of speed and range. Pakistan has shown that it can keep adding ERA bricks and bolt on armour to its tanks to mitigate perceived armour deficiencies as and when needed and the T90 has a similar capability.

Don't get me wrong, it s a great tank- if you intend to be fighting on the Northern European Plain.

Tbe Arjun main problem was (popular opinion not withstanding) not its weight, but armour. It was designed when HEAT and ATGM were considered the main theat. But y 1990's the PA had started to equip its tanks with DU APFSDS, both 105 and 125mm. That wasn't something that its designers had considered, One of the reasons that the Russian T90 was boiught was since the Russians assured the IA that its ERA would be able to defeat these DU penetrators. In retospect, Ukraine has shown that it would not have.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

Not sure about this. They certainly had the numbers but since Wisconsin only got recommissioned in 1988 (after what was essentially a rebuild of its electrical and electronic systems and modification of its propulsion) and Iowa was out of service soon after, I don't think it ever actually happened.

Tbe Arjun main problem was (popular opinion not withstanding) not its weight, but armour. It was designed when HEAT and ATGM were considered the main theat. But y 1990's the PA had started to equip its tanks with DU APFSDS, both 105 and 125mm. That wasn't something that its designers had considered, One of the reasons that the Russian T90 was boiught was since the Russians assured the IA that its ERA would be able to defeat these DU penetrators. In retospect, Ukraine has shown that it would not have.

They definitely did, from about 1982 to 1987. The ABL refits of the Spuances and CGNs totaled 96 tubes, equal to 3 Iowas and were not finished until 85 or 86, and the VLS Spruance refits did not get started until 87 or 88, about the same time the VLS equipped ticos started entering the fleet

I'm pretty sure the main problem of the Arjun is the 120mm Rifled Gun is below par compared to the smoothbores almost everybody else is using

 

[Blyatnik]

I am a bit puzzled at times about the various accounts I have read about Soviet era Tanks (both during the cold war, shortly after the cold war, and in more recent years when Russia has been using similar tanks.) I am not sure I would use the term over rated to describe them, but I am having a bit of a hard time reconciling some of the reports coming from the conflict in Ukraine with what I seem to recall reading of reported tests by western nations shortly after the cold war ended. (I seem to recall there was some surprise about how difficult the armor on at least some Soviet Era tanks was to defeat.)

I suspect there is a logical explanation for much of this.

Soviet Tanks using Contact-5 ERA in 1991 against Western penetrators like DM-23 is a much more even matchup than an ATGM or a minefield to those same tanks. In a testing situation, those tanks are being shot in their strongest spots as well, which remain unchanged. More things can defeat Contact-5 now than could in 1991, like ATGMs and minefields. And a large majority of losses have occured because of improper use and application of doctrine, and many to artillery, which will still destroy any tank regardless of size or armor.

I would say the only truly overrated tank of the late-Cold War period on the Soviet side was the T-72A, which people actually thought would hold up to NATO tanks. It wouldn't, not without ERA of some kind. The T-80 was a much better design.

 

[Bougnas]

Soviet Tanks using Contact-5 ERA in 1991 against Western penetrators like DM-23 is a much more even matchup than an ATGM or a minefield to those same tanks. In a testing situation, those tanks are being shot in their strongest spots as well, which remain unchanged. More things can defeat Contact-5 now than could in 1991, like ATGMs and minefields. And a large majority of losses have occured because of improper use and application of doctrine, and many to artillery, which will still destroy any tank regardless of size or armor.

I would say the only truly overrated tank of the late-Cold War period on the Soviet side was the T-72A, which people actually thought would hold up to NATO tanks. It wouldn't, not without ERA of some kind. The T-80 was a much better design.

T-72 had comparable protection to contemporary T-80 variants. I have never heard of T-72A out of all things being overrated by people of the day and later.

In general the notion of Soviet tanks being overrated is strange to me. NATO intelligence generally assessed them to have poorer characteristics than in reality. The threat always was deemed to be the high number of decent Soviet tanks, not any individual invincibility.

 

[Blue cat]

If you added in the TSR2 you could manage to piss off everyone of those people...

Yeah IMHO the CF105 and the TSR2 seem have a number of supporters. My sense is there may be a bit more definitive data about the capabilities of the TSR2 than the CF105 to draw upon when assessing how they might have worked out in service.

A small part of me wonders what might have happened if the Cold War had gone hot and a western Air Force had gone to war with a mixed fleet of CF105’s and TSR2’s ?

For added bonus points one could try and factor in how much money might have been spent to fully develop and acquire fleets of them and what else that money might have funded ?

 

[Monk78]

Rifles. All of them. For all the ink spilled on Rifle X being better than Rifle Y, or Cartridge P better than Cartridge Q, it doesn't really matter.

While it might be important for the infantry in the fight, at an operational level all that's really required is that it goes bang when the trigger is pulled. Any target that's hard enough to neutralise that the calibre of your rifle matters, you shouldn't be engaging with rifles anyway - at least in general war. That's been pretty much true since the machine gun went into general issue.

So you mean in 1914 the type of rifles on each side was not a huge issue ?

 

[steamboy]

Anything Soviet. Reality has proven otherwise that the Russian tanks and IFV's are inferior to their Western counterparts.

 

[historyfool]

T-72 had comparable protection to contemporary T-80 variants. I have never heard of T-72A out of all things being overrated by people of the day and later.

In general the notion of Soviet tanks being overrated is strange to me. NATO intelligence generally assessed them to have poorer characteristics than in reality. The threat always was deemed to be the high number of decent Soviet tanks, not any individual invincibility.

I remember talking 20 years ago to one of the guys involved in evaluating NVA tanks for the Bundeswehr Post-1990 20. He told me that they went in expecting something at least equal to the Leopard 2 (which was criticised as too little to late vs New Generation Soviet tanks upon introduction - see e.g. this German article from 1970). They went out thinking the whole Leo2 project was a giant waste of money, as further upgrades to the Leo1 would have sufficed to counter it.

Now that was one opinion and maybe exaggerated in telling, but there was a genuine MBT scare around the T-72 and T-80 in the late 70s and 80s.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

The Nuclear torpedo

Expected to have a 2 for 1 kill ratio - the target and the sub launching it