![]() Critics charged that CIA had underestimated the Soviet defense budget by a factor of two in 1970 and possibly by a factor of three by 1979. Soviet products were treated by CIA as comparable to those of the USA, though admittedly they were often inferior to the latter. CIA's estimtes were cricicized by some for failing to allow sufficiently for the differences in the quality of goods and services in the USSR and USA. ![]() ![]() By 1983 the CIA model contained a description of over 1,000 distinct defense components. CIA calculated the ruble and dollar costs of all Soviet defense activities, except RDT&E, by identifying and listing Soviet forces and their support apparatus. The direct-costing or building-block approach was only by CIA because of the large amount of data on Soviet military activities needed to apply it. Thus the CIA adopted a "direct-costing" method, which estimated number of units in each military program, and then applied estimated individual prices to each unit. Major challenges include the lack of transparency in officially published numbers reported (particularly before 1992, and increasingly in the late 1990s), as well as the extent to which military expenditures continue to be allocated to ministries and agencies other than the Ministry of Defense. The difficulties in estimating Soviet and Russian military spending are well known.
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