Did the Soviet Union have a strong military?

Answer 1

Interesting question, difficult to answer.

At the height of the Cold War, there were two superpowers: the USA and the USSR. While the USSR had a tendency to build bigger and bigger weapons systems that were in some cases vastly more powerful than anything the US had (see Tsar Bomba), their technology was nowhere near what the west had. The US continued to downsize weapons systems, to the point of nonexistence (see President Regan's Star Wars sham). The fact is that the USSR could have lobbed a world ending amount of nuclear weapons at the west at any time, but before a single one of their bombs detonated, the US could have knocked most of them out of the sky, and could have hit with pin-point accuracy any target in the Soviet Union. What truly scarred the bejesus out of the Soviets were weapons systems like Pershing II. With about fifteen minutes heads-up, PII crews in Europe could have hit any single of the hundreds of windows of the Kremlin, and turned Red Square into a great glass bowl. While at the same time, the Soviet SS20, the equivalent Soviet system to PII, was twice the size of the American weapon, had about 2/3 the possible yield, slightly more range, but would have been lucky to get within 50 miles of the intended target.

In short, the Soviet Union had a vastly larger military force, with massive weapons that were of poor accuracy; while the US had fewer troops, but could thread the eye of a needle for fewer bucks.

Incidentally, this downsizing trend has continued. While the US has be no means the largest army of the industrialized nations. In raw troops, South Korea is far out front of all other nations with total frontline and reserve troops at 3,853,000. Behind them is China with active and reserves at 3,085,000. Followed by India with 3,073,000. And, the US with 2,936,396. Russia brings up the rear in the top five with 1,954,000. China has near five times the ships as the US, while we have about a thousand more aircraft. China and the US are about even with tanks and land warfare systems (not counting missiles of which there is no clear total for anyone). Still the US holds the lead with technology, being about twenty years in advance of most other nations.

Answer 2

they wanted to control the world and become superpowers.