My years in service was probably when the American military was weakest against the Soviet threat. This being '77 to '81. I was aware of it, training was kinda poor, morale was low, we had repeatedly been humiliated on the world stage. The worst of which being the Hostage crisis of '79. Being young I wasnt worried about anything but I was certainly aware of it. I was also on ground zero of our strategic response guarding it. And that response, both ours and the Soviets, was on hair trigger 24/7. We came close to Doomsday several times with accidents alone, and if we had accidents and miscommunications/errors in classifying threats? Imagine how many the Soviets had? Its kind of a miracle we survived those decades without a catastrophe.
Young people today have no idea the constant terror of WW-lll we used to live under. The alert level has been lessened, we both have far fewer deliverable weapons then we had "tho still plenty to wipe us all out", the Bombers are off the hot pads. Now there is probably more danger to a third world nuclear exchange, or terrorism use, then there is a super power attack.
At the time I honestly didnt think anything would ever change. But all things change. I think the height of the stare down was when we moved in Pershing-ll's and cruise missiles into Europe back in the mid-'80s. The Reds never really had an answer for cruise missiles and by then we had the initiative again technologically which forced them to the bargaining table for the IRNF treaty. It was during the '70s however that I believe was the biggest danger. We were all basically living for the day back then, thinking it really was only a matter of time.
