Originally Posted by zraver

I actually think the chances of stalemate are pretty limited, certainly not any more of a chance than one side winning hands down. One side or the other was always transitioning to a very large edge. By the time that trend was identified and steps started to correct it, the side with the edge was at the end of its cycle and the roles of catching up would reverse.

overall on the ground the Soviets seem to have reacted faster. For example just a year after the US finally answered the T-55 with the M-60 the Red Army had the T-62 which means the Soviets were already planning to upstage the T-55 series before the US even had an answer to it. The US seems to have been the leader in the air. After the debut of the F-4 Phantom II the Soviets never really regained parity.

That being said the US almost always had an edge in the quality of manpower it could use. The nature of the Soviet System with its Russian bias assigned cannon fodder jobs to minorities. The US did the same thing to a degree, but US African-Americans and whites at least shared the same language and both were familiar with technology to some degree. On top of that the 2 year conscription of the Red Army vs the 3 year US hitch is significant. Longer enlistments mean a slower turn over and more time for the experiance Joe Schmo learned to be passed on to new recruit John Doe. Plus the US had a professional NCO corps. These professionals knew things you can't learn in school. So even the given that Soviet Officers were as good as American Officers, the US officers got a ready made pool of experience to draw on. On top of that, once the battlefield became much more technical following Vietnam. The US's manpower base with its wider grounding in mechanical and technological systems would without a doubt increase efficiency.