Quite readable despite the relatively dry material. This provides a very comprehensive overview of the development of Soviet strategic platforms (primarily missiles, but also bombers/submarine, command-and-control, and other technologies) from the end of World War II to the year 2000. Obviously some of the 1990s and beyond material is a bit dated, but if you want real insight into how the Soviet defense-bureaucratic complex competed to produce missiles - and how, for instance, the Soviets fielded something like 20 variants of 11 missiles (to the United States's six and four, respectively), this is a great primer. And we still see the echoes today, to some extent, in the ongoing Borei/Bulava saga. It also makes apparent why INF was an easy win for the U.S. in the Cold War, and makes no suggestion that we abandon that treaty, or ABM, or anything else that we threaten to upend. And for what? ( )

This is an excellent read. Covers the history of a little known subject from the Soviet view and matches it to our own in the USA. Covers both the technology and the politics in both the development and deployment of the weapons systems.

One tidbit from this was the conflict in the Soviet system where the design of the systems themselves were separated from the manufacturing and of course from the deployment. One side effect of this is that the design bureaux had a great motivation to constantly come up with new systems, causing great troubles for the built and operate forces.

Zaloga does an excellent job with keeping things moving in a subject that could have rapidly turned into a book of stats and details.

Probably the most scary part of the book isn't the height of the cold war arms race, but the discussion of the post-Soviet arsenal. ( )

THE definitive book on Soviet/Russian atomic arms.

Detailed. Great inside facts. Well written.

Highly recommended. ( )