Hunt for Red October (1984)
Red Storm Rising (1986)
Patriot Games (1987)
The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)
Clear and Present Danger (1989)
Really only the first 2 on the list deal with Russian capabilities. In Cardinal they have an anti ICBM laser. Maybe overstated, who knows.
Red October gives the Soviets a submarine drive system. In the book it is a system that propels the water with huge magnetic fields. Scientifically possible, but beyond abilities to make magnetic fields that strong. In the movie it seems to be propellers inside the tube. This is possible, but would still make noise. Most subs today use propulsors of some type. This cuts down on blade tip cavitation.
Red Storm was supposed to be a Naval War in the North Atlantic. Larry Bond co wrote a lot of it and they used his game Harpoon to game it out.
IMHO Red October and Red Storm captured the submarine part amazingly well. Sure there were parts of RO that were over the top, but the capabilities were close.
RSR was spot on with the sub vs sub fights. Alphas were much louder in real life. The Soviet Navy sucked in the 1980s. Victor IIIs were ok, but the other boats were so loud. Their surface Navy was just targets waiting to be sunk.
Was the land part accurate? Who knows. IMHO the thing nobody talks about is the quality of the troops. NATO had a great set of professional Armies, who would have been fighting for their right to exist. Soviets were a bunch of 2 year conscripts who were not fighting for Mother Russia against the barbaric Nazis.
F-117 would have probably been a huge surprise. Giving NATO time to field their Armies was an idiotic mistake. In the end though they are just books. Would RSR have sold many copies if the Soviets destroyed NATO in 2 weeks? If the Soviets were so inept that they couldn’t even find the English Channel?