You pretty much lost all credibility with that comment. The -31 was designed as a bomber interceptor. It's not a dog fighter. WVR, it's dead meat for pretty much any NATO fighter. Yeah, it's fast. That's all you can really say about it.
Maybe he's thinking of the Mig-31 from Clint Eastwood's "Firefox"?
<snip>Immediately after the occupation there would be resistance, perhaps some of it on the "nothing to lose" basis. Once the war is over, and I am making the assumption that if the Russians/WP get this far the war will end, most of the population will decide better to keep their heads down and avoid the firing squad, GULAG, and disaster for their family.
Similar to a 60s era novel where it is the USA that is threatened with Soviet occupation, albeit with the Russians using very much science-fiction means: A Super-Laser that somehow uses giant reflector satellites to overcome the curvature of the Earth to enable them to destroy one target after another every 30 seconds (using the destruction of Israel's nuclear arsenal as an example). Their terms? Unconditional surrender.
Since this book came out in the late 60s the tone set for some of the American characters was so self-flagellatory that you had the US SecDef urging the POTUS to surrender. But the POTUS' National Security Advisor gave a pointed speech describing much more accurately what would happen if the US surrendered:
"Was Hitler any more merciful in victory? Or Stalin? Or Mao? If we surrender, the Russians will send occupation troops. The commissars will move in, the KGB will fan out, and we'll all be in for a reign of terror worse than the Nazis. Every nation has its collaborators, (1) and God knows we'll be no different. But as I see it, the danger won't be from the extreme left but the extreme right. The extreme left will welcome the occupiers with open arms, until they discover that the worker's paradise they were expecting was just the product of their fragile link with reality. They'll be just as destroyed as everyone else in the end. Its the extreme right who are the real danger. The ones who will run off to the hills and snipe at the occupiers. For us, freedom is inbred now. The extreme right will never forgive you. They'll see you as having given away their birthright. And when they fight, the Russians will squash them like mosquitoes. Every state will become a battleground, with the rest of the populace being dragged into the conflict. Even nuclear weapons could be used to destroy the rebellion. In the end, national annihilation will happen whether we surrender or not!"
Good speech.
1) IMO the CPUSA is just too small to represent a credible force of collaborators. Most other countries have SOME number of communists. Or at least a sizable number of Socialists that could contain a sufficient number of "far left" (i.e., secret communists/communist sympathizers) people to form a credible group of collaborators. But AISI, in America, while there'd be some far leftists willing to embrace the Soviets, its far more likely that any group of American collaborators will instead be comprised of the sort who are failures in life, failures in doing anything but turning on their neighbors. The typical "Block Watch Commander" in communist systems tend to be talentless obnoxious busybodies good for nothing but reporting people to The Party. In America, these are your likely collaborators, along with third-rate ex-history teachers, failed radio hosts, ex-cops/night watchmen, and pretty much anyone else who has been a failure in life up to that point AND has no personal history that the Soviets would have no problem with.
<snip>it almost makes you want to invest in a fallout shelter, doesn't it?
Maybe the Russians were afraid of a Doomsday Bomb Gap? BTW? Fallout shelters aren't very useful. You need a BOMB shelter, which means a lot more $$$. Odds are if you build one, the neighbors are going to find out. And if you have enough warning to get into your bomb shelter, so will your neighbors. A classic Twilight Zone episode was done on this idea.
Not really in my view...
During the latter part of the Cold War the U.S. put a lot of emphasis on being able to absorb a bolt out of the blue first strike and be able to launch some form of counter strike. I recall reading a quote from one USAF General that basically said the looking glass air craft (mission) was the single most important task the USAF performed and every other program would be cut if needed to keep that mission going. Looking glass referred to air borne command posts that were in the air 7x24 and reportedly could order the launch of nuclear weapons.
Not for nothing was NORAD put under a mountain in Colorado, SAC HQ (and its land-based ICBMs) as deep into the Central United States as it was possible to get, and the US putting so much of its nuclear TRIAD into SLBMs while (at one point) only 22% into land-based bombers. IIRC, if the Soviets launched a "bolt-from-the-blue", only about one third of the USAF's land-based nuclear bomber deterrent would get off the ground in sufficient time to escape the nuclear strikes on their air bases and proceed to their targets.