Dayton Kitchens
Banned
There's a very extensive AH (posted elsewhere, not here) by, if memory serves me right, JN1, called "The Last War" about a Cold War lasting beyond 1989/1991 that goes hot in 2005. It started several years ago and I believe it's still in progress. Very Clancyesque, lots of looks at things that don't often get covered in a conventional-WWIII timeline.
Sounds interesting, do you have a link to it?
All this stuff looks pretty expensive so how does the US financed it ? The budget under Reagan was eh lets call it not balanced.
Remember that "Cold War not ending", does not mean "a continuing worsening relations".
Even in 1988, there was pressure on the U.S. to cut or at least reduce the rate of increases in defense spending. I can see a leveling off of defense expenditures in the early 1990s paired with a Soviet scale back at around the same time (kind of a 'mini detente"). Then along about 1994-95, worries about the Soviet Union trigger another renewal of U.S. military spending increases.
The U.S. had the "bomber gap" and a "missile gap" in the 50s & 60s (perceived not real). Perhaps in the 1990s we would've had a "submarine gap" fueled by pictures of those huge Soviet Typhoon class SSBNs.