Changes

===Soviet Estimates===  

===Soviet Estimates===  

The CIA began systematic estimates of the Soviet economy during Max Millikan's tenure as the founding director of the Office of Research and Reports (1951-1952). The strategy was to start with an "inventory of ignorance" and then reduce the list of unknowns through successive approximations.  Soviet military expenditures were estimated by the "building-block method," which began by estimating the number ships, planes, jeeps, barracks and even soldiers in use, then estimating the procurement and operating costs of each, and adding them up using estimated prices. The building blocks had advantages in that published data on physical units seemed accurate and in any case were easier to verify through covert means. The elaborate reports of the 1990s included almost 1800 such categories. Since the Soviets lackd computers and had rudimentary accounting procedures, the CIA had a better overall picture of Soviet military spending than did the Kremlin. The reports emphasized physical units, realizing that expenditures alone could not predict what sort of military threat in the future would be presented by the Red Army. To estimate costs the CIA used analogs--using Soviet trucks or American tanks, for instance, to estimate the costs of Soviet tanks--and then adjusted for differences in weight and performance. Analog-based data, far shakier than direct-cost data, accounted for over half of earlier estimates, dropping to about one-third by the late 1980s. In the 1960s the CIA increasingly used quantitative techniques, of the sort promoted in American business schools.  A crisis in the mid-1970s was caused by as a combination of external pressures, new data (some from a key Russian who defected to the West) and internal works forced a major revision of the defense burden, showing the proportion of of the overall Soviet economy devoted to the military. The crisis sparked heated public debate when the CIA announced that their earlier estimates of Soviet defense spending at 6-8% of GNP was too low by as much as half; the revised estimated burden ranged from 11-13%, indicating a severe economic burden that slowed Soviet growth.<ref> Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, ''Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990.'' (1998)</ref>

The CIA began systematic estimates of the Soviet economy during Max Millikan's tenure as the founding director of the Office of Research and Reports (1951-1952). The strategy was to start with an "inventory of ignorance" and then reduce the list of unknowns through successive approximations.  Soviet military expenditures were estimated by the "building-block method," which began by estimating the number ships, planes, jeeps, barracks and even soldiers in use, then estimating the procurement and operating costs of each, and adding them up using estimated prices. The building blocks had advantages in that published data on physical units seemed accurate and in any case were easier to verify through covert means. The elaborate reports of the 1990s included almost 1800 such categories. Since the Soviets lacked computers and had rudimentary accounting procedures, the CIA had a better overall picture of Soviet military spending than did the [[Kremlin]]. The reports emphasized physical units, realizing that expenditures alone could not predict what sort of military threat in the future would be presented by the Red Army. To estimate costs the CIA used analogs--using Soviet trucks or American tanks, for instance, to estimate the costs of Soviet tanks—and then adjusted for differences in weight and performance. Analog-based data, far shakier than direct-cost data, accounted for over half of earlier estimates, dropping to about one-third by the late 1980s. In the 1960s the CIA increasingly used quantitative techniques, of the sort promoted in American business schools.  A crisis in the mid-1970s was caused by as a combination of external pressures, new data (some from a key Russian who defected to the West) and internal works forced a major revision of the defense burden, showing the proportion of of the overall Soviet economy devoted to the military. The crisis sparked heated public debate when the CIA announced that their earlier estimates of Soviet defense spending at 6-8% of GNP was too low by as much as half; the revised estimated burden ranged from 11-13%, indicating a severe economic burden that slowed Soviet growth.<ref> Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, ''Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990.'' (1998)</ref>

===Directorate of Science & Technology===

===Directorate of Science & Technology===