Military equipment if the Cold War continued till 2019

Yes they were developed in response to a NATO requirement but lots of requirements and requests for proposals end with nothing in service. You might see handguns chambered in "PDW" high velocity rounds like the FN Five-Seven but all the PDW's are significantly bigger and heavier than the handguns they were meant to replace and they will always be more expensive, size and capability dictates that. On an army wide scale convenience and ability to perform the primary task will outweigh sightly more capacity if things go wrong.
At the end of the day if an air defence battery gets attacked by a Spetsnaz platoon they're buggered no matter what their side arm is.
 
I agree with those saying that the armour penetration of a PDW is unneeded and could be replaced with an SMG, carbine or pistol as:

PDW’s are for rear-area troops to defend themselves if attacked

Those who will attack rear-area troops in normal situations are either special forces or insurgents

Rear-area troops are going to lose to Spetznaz no matter what, it is mostly irrelevant if they can penetrate the Spetznaz’s body armour as the Spetznaz have the element of surprise and training

Insurgents don’t wear body armour so SMG’s or 9mm pistols are sufficient

PDW’s with armour-piercing rounds will still be procured for special forces and perhaps some other roles like urban combat, but will not be as widespread as envisioned.
 
Never say never with regards to insurgents and body armour.

At the moment it’s been lucky with regards to where and how the insurgency has occurred.

If for example something happened in say (hypothetically) Turkey, it would probably be much more likely that the insurgents would have body armour, at least early in the campaign.
 
I wouldn't be so certain, the G11 was absolutely not a finished, service ready weapon system in 1990 and it may well end up going the way of the SA80. There were issues with the ammunition and just how reliable it would be in service is unclear, I suspect not very considering it's complexity. Now if you throw enough money and time at something you can fix it, see the SA80, but equally you could see the G11 take 15 years to perfect and put everyone off caseless ammunition. Also PDW's are not the future and were never going to be. If artillerymen need a small arm something has gone catastrophically wrong so they're better off with something small and cheap like a conventional pistol.
The G11 was in development for over 20 years by 1990, any problem that could be solved (including cook-offs; those were worked on for the last 6 years of the program) was pretty much solved by then. The only problems that weren't solved were gas blow-by and other problems inherent to caseless and/or telescopic ammunition. Those probably would kill the program anyway, but cook-offs and reliability wouldn't.
 
urgh. That many more years of MAD. Half the fun of the 90s was the idea that the world had taken a big step away from 'the world could be destroyed any time now'.
I wonder what would happen with space. Along with the usual spy satellite stuff, the US and USSR had a low grade competition to explore space, both sides sending probes all over. More missions to distant planets?
 
urgh. That many more years of MAD. Half the fun of the 90s was the idea that the world had taken a big step away from 'the world could be destroyed any time now'.
I wonder what would happen with space. Along with the usual spy satellite stuff, the US and USSR had a low grade competition to explore space, both sides sending probes all over. More missions to distant planets?

The USSR would have its own shuttle program backed up by a super heavy lift rocket, the Energia, which would be used to launch a system of orbital anti-satellite lasers platforms. They would also have their own independent Mir 2 space station. The US would have countered with Space Station Freedom.

Militarisation of space would be inexorably increasing.
 
The USSR would have its own shuttle program backed up by a super heavy lift rocket, the Energia, which would be used to launch a system of orbital anti-satellite lasers platforms. They would also have their own independent Mir 2 space station. The US would have countered with Space Station Freedom.

Militarisation of space would be inexorably increasing.

I agree there'd be many more spy sats, ASATS and no ISS, but (in your opinion) what are the advantages of satellite lasers over ASATS?
 
I agree there'd be many more spy sats, ASATS and no ISS, but (in your opinion) what are the advantages of satellite lasers over ASATS?

It's chiefly a matter of range, ASAT missiles can be effective against platforms in low earth orbit, but to strike out to Geostationary and beyond you would need increasingly larger missiles. A laser placed in orbit would however be capable.

They planned to pair the longer ranged lasers with a set of shorter ranged orbital ASAT missile platforms called Kaskad.

Polyus/Skif was a real program ,and the Soviets launched a fully functioning prototype on the first Energia armed with a megawatt CO2 laser.
However a malfunction in the guidance system caused it to burn up.

Shortly after the USSR disintegrated and like most Soviet weapons programs the ASAT system was abandoned. However it is suspected by some that Zarya, the power generation module for the ISS is in fact a modified Skif component.
 
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