American leaders realized Soviet strategic nuclear parity or even potential superiority might create a window of vulnerability, giving Moscow free rein in international politics at US expense. The need for the Second Offset began to sharpen with Russia’s deployment of the fearsome new Soviet SS-19 nuclear missile, carrying multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicles, or MIRVs.

According to Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, some of the Second Offset’s deepest roots lay with the Air Force. Yet this quiet approach was a tour de force that bridged across the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan presidencies and ultimately fueled the precision targeting revolution in the 1990s. Epic debates on US and Soviet nuclear strategy usually overshadowed it, and harvesting the gains of the Second Offset took the better part of 20 years. Thus arose what became known as the “Second Offset.” Though the US couldn’t afford to match the Soviets tank for tank, it could field smaller numbers of extremely capable, high-quality equipment, leap-ahead technologies, and associated operational concepts.

The conventional mismatch again raised the specter that the West wouldn’t be able to hold Soviet conventional forces at bay in Europe or elsewhere. As the Soviets achieved rough nuclear parity in the early 1970s, however, it stunted the utility of the nuclear option. In the 1950s, the US had resorted to a lopsidedly large nuclear force to offset the USSR’s overwhelming conventional capability. They couldn’t hope to match Russia’s growing Cold War numerical advantages, so they had to find another way to deter the Soviet Union.

Vast columns of Soviet tanks, troops, jets, and ships haunted American defense leaders in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tank game us military made in the 80's