Weaponry in Soviet Victory TL

If somehow the USSR won the Cold War, how would their weapons technology development?
Would they modify or replace their AK74s?
And would their quest for orbital weapons continued?
Or would the Soviets gone a period of malaism like OTL US?

Thanks in advance!
 

Delta Force

Banned
It depends on the PoD and how they were able to win. If the United States was to have collapsed in the 1980s or 1990s or the USSR was able to have survived the 1990s to win later on there would actually be surprisingly little change relative to OTL. The Russians placed a high priority on completing the rocket, air defense, and submarine programs of the USSR even during the darkest days of the 1990s. They have more recently started to complete aircraft projects started under the USSR, and the tanks which they have completed are still very much in the Soviet style. The largest divergence would likely be the surface fleet and naval aviation, the USSR would have finally developed a strong naval aviation arm with the completion of supercarriers. If you want some specific programs, I can provide you with some.

The USSR would have continued to develop and produce new weaponry, not to cement its hegemony like the US OTL but because they had an economy very reliant on war material production. Over time they might turn the arms plants and shipyards over to making cars, trucks, trains, airliners, and cargo ships, but they would still spend a lot of resources on the military.

The AK-74 would be unlikely to be replaced. There were proposals to replace it with firearms with special gas systems in the 1990s, but they were not adopted OTL because of cost and complexity (minimally trained conscripts would have trouble maintaining the many parts and keeping the systems reliable). Even more than the US, the USSR never gets rid of something that still works, especially if the alternative is more complex. Advanced AK-74 replacements might see service with special forces, just like OTL, and just like how the M-16 and M-4 are still standard issue in the US with SOCOM using SCAR rifles and M-16 variants with improved gas systems.
 
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