United States officials and politicians grossly overstated Soviet military capabilities in the cases known as the "bomber gap", "missile gap" and "cruiser gap". Did Soviet officials ever have similarly overestimated any U.S./NATO military equipment levels and technologies?

by ForgotToLogIn
Jon_Beveryman

Yes, very much. One example that comes to mind is the "military-technical revolution" of the late 1970s and 1980s. Soviet military leaders during the Reagan years in particular were fairly spooked by Western advances in precision weapons, reconnaissance methods, and other technologies which we would now call 'C4ISTAR,' ISR, or some combination thereof: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Recon. In plain English: all the technologies and methods used to detect a target, see exactly what and where it is, and tell someone to shoot it before it moves. In modern Western defense circles this is now called the sensor-shooter system or network. The Soviets (and now the Russians) describe this integration as the reconnaissance-strike or reconnaissance-destruction complex. In the 1980s, the United States began working on this concept under the general heading Assault Breaker. The Assault Breaker program as a whole was designed to combine airborne radars (E-8 JSTARS, Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System), computerized command posts, long-range guided missiles (ATACMS, Army Tactical Missile System), and advanced artillery systems like guided anti-tank cluster munitions (DPICM, Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition). Assault Breaker was designed to find and destroy Soviet formations "in the depths," that is, far behind the front lines. The Soviets assessed Assault Breaker, and generic recce-strike systems like it, as comparably destructive to tactical nuclear weapons. They weren't entirely wrong, either, in many observers' analysis: precision-strike weapons like ATACMS would have been used on targets like armor concentrations, supply depots, second echelon and reserve forces, command posts, and so on, which previously would have been prime targets for small nukes. However, the Soviets undertook serious efforts to counter this program, probably disproportionate to how effective Assault Breaker as a whole turned out to be. JSTARS, ATACMS, and DPICM all turned into complete products, but lots of the other systems were either delayed or nonfunctional, such as the Brilliant Anti-Tank munition.

EDIT: Here is a concept sketch of the Assault Breaker network, as a visual aid.

For further reading:

David Glantz, The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver: Spearhead of the Offensive, particularly the first two chapters.

Van Atta et al, "Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs," Ch. IV

Larry A. Brisky (1990) "The reconnaissance destruction complex: A Soviet operational response to Airland Battle," The Journal of Soviet Military Studies, 3:2, 296-306, DOI: 10.1080/13518049008429985

Milan Vega,"Recce-Strike Complexes in Soviet Theory and Practice," Soviet Army Studies Office, 1990.

Viktor Reznichenko, Тактика (Taktika - Tactics), Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984. (Recommend MJ Orr's translation for RMA Sandhurst's Soviet Studies Research Centre if Russian isn't your strong suite.)