Red Army = most effective force !

[Marcello]

"Soviet Army wouldn't have encountered any difficulties in conquering Western Europe in the event of CONVENTIONAL war with NATO."

It depends on the timeframe.In 1979,likely. In 1989, not so much.

[Smersh]

It depends on the timeframe.In 1979,likely. In 1989, not so much.

do you mean strictly technically or also considering the political situation of the warsaw pact.

[Marcello]

"do you mean strictly technically"

With the caveat that evaluating armies purely on the basis of weapon systems matchup isn't advisable, T-64A vs M60A1 sounds a lot better than T-80B vs M1A1 (for the soviet side, that is).

[Smersh]

sorry, I meant both techniqually and materially(numbers)

[JaM]

Red Army was impressive force on paper, but situation on the field would be different. Most of the equipment was just cannon fodder,mayority of tanks used were still T-55,T-62.Later after 1986 they had more T-80B but there were Leopards-2, M1A1 and Challys.

[Mobhack]

Thier problems always seemed to be poor build quality, and lack of spares and repairs.

Vehicles were dumped outside in the open and left without maintenance to fester with the snow piling up in winter etc - only a few were actually fired up and used for training or some obsolete vehicles were actually used instead of the actual unit kit for training, so if the baloon actually went up then the conscript crews would have little clue about thier t-72s as they had trained on say T-54.

I recall buying some "Baikal" brand 12 bore shotgun shells back in the 70's. Allegedly for export (or a cunning KGB plan to make Westerners complacent about USSR ammo quality ?? ) - About half the cost of normal shells, but I only bought a few boxes. 2 or 3 misfires out of maybe 4 boxes, the brass started to rust/discolour after a couple of outings, and the fouling in the barrel was bad (no plastic shot cup).

Andy

[Marek_Tucan]

Similar situation Mobhack describes was with T-35 heavy tanks already before WW2 - their units were training on T-26's and T-35 was being fired up just for parades.