Even if their nuke forces have poor QC they have quantity.
I met Richard Rhodes who wrote about the making of the atomic and nuclear bombs. He was a bit of a lefty but one thing he said surprised me. He said Curtis LeMay had the worst job of the Cold War. It was to make sure not one bomber got through to the US. Based on his experience in both Europe and Japan he knew with certainty that bombers would always get through.
Curtis LeMay’s job was getting OUR bombers to the Soviet Union, not keeping their’s out.
He was CINC SAC, not ADCOM. By the time he became CINC USAF, the Soviets were doing missiles and let bombers take a back seat.
Richard Rhodes doesn’t know jack about the USAF or its history.
I did 5 years in ADCOM, and 3 in SAC (among many others)—totally different missions.
Are you sure Rhodes was not talking about the certainty of at least one American bomber getting through Russian air defenses, rather than the chance Russians could get through ours?
After all, we know the Russkies talk big but lack know-how, and our military guys have good old Yankee ingenuity (at least they did before Obama).
This is true even if the Russians happen to know our bomber’s exact flight plan:
Life imitates art, you know. ;)
Good night.