Russia: Weapons on Display: Voluntary & Involuntary

In the sky above Moscow, flights of Soviet jets in tight formation spelled out the word Lenin and the arabic numeral 50 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. As Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin looked on from an airport on the city's outskirts, the Soviet military last week put on a rare demonstration of new military aircraft; the last such display was six years ago. To Western observers, the Moscow show also spelled out something else: a new direction in Soviet airpower.

In the past, the Russians...

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