I was always under the impression that the USSR had the advantage over NATO for much of the cold war until the 80's, when the stagnating Soviet economy hurt their weapons programs whist Reagan's militarization programs (M1 Abrams, Apache helicopters, Bradleys, Humvees, etc.) started getting deployed in Europe. However, reading this thread, especially posts by a user called 'ikalugin', suggests to me that the USSR has parity over NATO in pure technical terms anyway. Are there any truth to his claims, or is it just the almost universal Russian superiority complex?
Some examples of superiority of USSR equipment outlined in the thread:
-Late T-80 models being superior to M1A1 tanks and, by extension, other NATO MBT's
-Late model T-64 being the same as T-80's therefore by extension they're better than NATO MBT's as well
-Superiority of MIG-29 and SU-27 over F-15 as well as the Soviet pioneering of data links