Had the Soviet Union not collapsed in the early 90s what type of weapon systems do you think it woul

Right around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians had been working on some very advanced and capable systems like the Ulyanovisk Class CVNs, Energia super heavy lift launch vehicles, Buran spaceplanes, and Polyus battle stations. How far do you think those systems would have been developed and what other advanced tech do you think they would have developed had their economey not melted down?

[edit on 1-8-2008 by DSCAEDALUS]

[edit on 1-8-2008 by DSCAEDALUS]

[edit on 1-8-2008 by DSCAEDALUS]

by the looks of their jets they have now I would say unimaginable ones

I'd guess the same cheap junk they always made the Russians were never really a threat. I don't think they would have anything much better than they have now honestly although they may have had a bit more of it.

They did provide a bit of a balance in worldwide stability though and no one has really filled that place since.

I agree with solo1, their jets would be amazing now and i can only imagine what level of aircraft tech Mikoyan-Gurevich (MIG) would have come up with by now.

Americans too have full spectrum dominance in the sky
but I can't discount the Russians that easily they are far from stupid people,
quite capable.
their assault rifles too have proven quite remarkable over all these years

Rockets are at least up to par with American designs.
I have to say if they had reformed from Communism into a free market in the 50's I think they would have some amazing things today.

I think we would have seen the militarisation of space far sooner, and possibly an intelligence based Mir orbiting the earth, but we wouldn't have the likes of google maps and G.P.S. for the public to use. Space would have been seen as a far more important assets for the the military to control than it is for us.

Also I doubt there would be any worries on climate change, but possibly large projects to alter the climate of Russia, the Russians were planning to put a satellite with a large reflective disk into space a few years ago to increase the sunlight agricultural areas could receive.

With Russia being such a large supplier or oil and natural gas in Europe renewable technologies would have been important in these nations especially civilian nuclear technology.

The development of energy weapons may have occurred in Russia before the U.S. as laser based radar would have become useful for detection of stealth aircraft, the energy required to sweep the skies with a laser would be huge and that energy could be concentrated into more lethal uses.

Stealth technology may have been far in advanced to what is is now if the U.S. had to compete more ferociously with the Russians and we may have seen the development of meta-materials sooner.

Finally I would expect the Russians and Americans to enter into a second space race to reach mars, I highly doubt a moon base would ever be on the agenda for both nations if there was a possibility to land on the fourth planet.

[edit on 3-8-2008 by -Klaus-]

I think the Buran would have been developed to something phenomenal. It's Energia booster system was a better design compared to the design of the solid rocket boosters on the Shuttle - 20 below? Who cares, it could launch.

I think the Buran also had two jets on either side of it - if it need be, it could have landed in Cuba or anywhere else in the world using powered flight.

However, it only made one flight - unmanned. And orbited one or two times, but it did make a fully automated landing.

It was big projects like that and the massive nuclear arsenal that helped bring the Soviet Union down. It could build these things, but it was relying on food aid in the late 80s to feed its people.

Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika reforms ultimately led to the whole thing imploding - the reforms were too little too late.

If hardliners didn't hold the guy hostage, there could feasibly still be a form of a Soviet state in existence today.

Although, given the number of accidental nuclear close-calls between the US and the Soviet Union, neither mightn't have existed this far. A disheveled Soviet state coming out of the coup attempt would've been a fairly twitchy one.

The mind boggles...

[edit on 3-8-2008 by mattguy404]

I've always thought that if there had been a slower, softer transition from communism to capitalism and less political volitility the Soviet Union would be very much alive today, just heavily revised. I would think though it would be probably resemble modern China in terms of governmental and economic policies and with those type of reforms and a compitition based economy we would probably see weapons and tech far more terrifying than the stuff that was under development in the late 1980s.

Skimming around sites like warfare.ru, and even astronautix.com showed the russians had some pretty wicked stuff under construction: Meteorit-M ramjet cruise missiles, there own version of NASA's NASP hypersonic transport, and even a derivitive of the Buran shuttle with a cargo bay modified to carry nuclear warheads. In fact modern Russia's econmic growth has enabled it's military to gain the funds necasary to dust off some of these projects and complete them.

I have a very limited knowledge when it comes to weapon systems, and especially what nations like Soviet had developed and what Russia now has. Based on simply economic models I would imagine them being at least a couple of years behind the US as far as inovation and research in weapons technology goes now. Simply because of lack of competition and stimulation between developers.

A state-socialist economic system will always produce lower quality goods than a free market economy, and even though we are talking about weapons and not toasters, not even a constant arms race between the Soviet and the US up until today could stimulate the kind of growth and quality we see in weapon systems from the western world today through pure and simply private entities operating in a competative free market.

Naturally I can imagine the weapons industry also working on basis of pressure and reward from governments and states, of which Soviet was no exeption. So a totalitarian state may have been able to push research and developement of weapons technology to the same extent as a joint free market and government quest have done in the western world. Because russian scientists and developers are certainly not inferior minds to US scientists and developers. A nation or alliance pulling ahead in technology or civilisation relies on many factors, of which the economy and balance of state intervention, focus, priorties and treats from other nations are all very important. In any scenario we also have to factor in spies, technology and concept theft..etc.

As far as I can tell, Soviet created some very capable weapon systems (ICBMs, Jet tech..). This was probably purely a result of state and party funding, preassure and priorities, as well as a fair deal of theft and spy activity. Any capitalist nation state surpassed them on most other products. In light of what they did accomplish even under a socialist economy and very authoritarian social system, they may have theoretically been able to create some very fine technology simply as a result of pressure from the state, but then again I think research and production capabilities would have declined over time anyway. A autoritarian state-socialist nation is just not able to substain itself. It ends up rebelling on it self the same way Marx predicted the Capitalist system would eat itself. Highly authoritarian systems on both the left and the right have a very limited life-span. That has to be factored in when predicting it's abbility to discover and produce.

I've always thought that if there had been a slower, softer transition from communism to capitalism and less political volitility the Soviet Union would be very much alive today, just heavily revised.

A very relevant take when it comes to this topic. Aready in the Communist Manifesto by Marx we can predict (at least now based on experience and history) the very rapid and non-dynamic decline of Soviet's system. Any state that establish a radical social and economic system as a result of an authoritarian and violent overthrow of any kind of central administration will either be cast into chaos or will develop into a state that mirrors the authoritarian ways of how it was created. There was no basis for a dynamic progress to any sort of non-authoritarian system, so inevitably it did not happen that way. Instead they are still left with a highly authoritarian and non-democratic system even after the defeat of communism. Socialism was not Russia's bane in itself, authoritarianism was. Russia has been authoritarian for as long as it's relevant to look back in history in relation to the topic at hand. A soft transistion wold have been key, but there just was no culture for it. The desperation for change both under Tsar rule and Communsit rule both lead to authoritarian effort for change that lead to another form of authoritaria state.

[edit on 4-8-2008 by me_ofef_seraph]

Thanks for all the replies! This actually my first ATS post. It's interesting to think what would have been, however given Russia continued economic growth, larger pressence on the world stage, and its increased use its military might( the current situation in Georgia) we might just see modern reworkings of all the nasty toys that had been under developent at the end of The Cold War. For anyone who frequents warfare.ru or any general russian news sites Russia military higher ups are planning the construction of six new aircraft carrires, a stealth follow on to the TU-160, and at least 20 new stealth warships. I can't help but get the feeling that the Russian Bear is slowly waking from hibernation, but its probably going to be a while before it's any where near as powerful as the Soviet Union was.