"Ed Majden" wrote in message
news:iTLyb.541516$9l5.417832@pd7tw2no...

"Keith Willshaw"
Contrary to their claims at the time the Soviets did not have
the ICBM force they claimed and were believed to have
even as late as the Cuban missile crisis.Although NEI estimates put
their
strength at between 200 and 500 missiles in realty they had only
made a few deployments of at most 100 missiles and were not about to
expend them on possible Bomarc sites.

If what you say is correct, you can't say much for the American
intelligence community. Either that, or Ike was right! "Beware of the
military industrial complex in America". The military build up was not
for
security but to keep industries running.

I think thats overly cynical. The Russians were claiming they had the
weapons , the experts knew they could be developed in the time
frame since the USA had done so. Overestimating your enemies
capabilities and sizing your forces to match is usually less of a
problem than the converse so Intelligence analysts tend to take
the pessimistic view.

Glad we didn't have to carry out a test to see which concept was the
correct
one!


Indeed.

Keith