ABSTRACT
The United States possesses only one independent, ex post observation on Soviet weapons expenditures obtained from the books of the Soviet Ministry of Defense. As a result, all Western estimates of real Soviet weapons growth are necessarily uncertain, and hence controversial. Dollar estimates of real Soviet weapons growth may err significantly, because as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) revisions indicate, the satellite photo reconnaissance procedures used to count Soviet weapons are inadequate; because intelligence data on the qualitative aspects of Soviet weaponry are deficient; or because the procedures used to estimate unit costs are defective. Unit dollar prices are developed from data on the observed cost of US weapons compiled by the material acquisition departments of the US Department of Defense, adjusted to reflect Soviet performance characteristics or military engineering specifications or both ("Sovietization"). Both the CIA's and the Department of Defense's methodologies are divisible into static and dynamic subcomponents.
