The Soviets never had much of a Navy though. The first two years of the Twilight War were non-nuclear. That means there would be engagements between Aircraft carriers, of which the Soviets had a few. Destroyers would engage other destroyers and Submarines. I believe the first couple years would have proven decisive with the Uniter States Navy winning the Battle of the Seas. Neither side really wanted to go nuclear. If the Soviets wanted to use their nuclear missile subs, they would have had to use them early in the War before American Destroyers and attack subs had a chance to sink them all. Two years into the war, the Soviets would probably have few missile subs left. Most of the missiles would likely be launched from land. The Soviet Air Force would do poorly against the USAF as well, this fact is borne out by the recent small wars in the Persian Gulf and in Serbia. The Soviet's main strength was in its Army. The Soviet Army outnumbered NATO forces 3 to 1. My guess is the Soviets started using nuclear weapons when it became clear that they were losing the conventional war. The US Air Force would have given the Soviet Red Army a pounding. The Smart weapons program would likely have been accelerated during the confrontation leading up to the conflict and during the War's first two years. What they might have had technology-wise in 1997 might have been similar to what the US Air force has today. Using World War II as a guide, I'd say that 80% of Federal government expenditures would have been for military spending. the Pentagon's budget might have been something like $2 Trillion per year. That's an awful lot of money. Much of that money channeled toward research and development would have been waisted, but its a fair bet that much of that money would have acheived results that were ahead of its time. the technology of today, 2003 in our world might have been the technology available in 1997 in the Twilight 2000 timeline. I think SDI would have been continued throughout the 1990s instead of canceled due to the rising tensions. The US Air Force might have build a series of huge Saturn V Class rockets for lifting chemical powered lasers into low Earth Orbit. Perhaps a few prototypes of Edward Teller's prototype nuclear bomb pumped x-ray lasers would have been tested. Money would have been no object and even Environmental restrictions waived. I think there would have been some kind of antimissile system in place by the time World War III went nuclear, it wouldn't be perfect of course and the Soviets had alot of missiles and some would no doubt get through. Their might even be secret weapons labs that haven't been destroyed by the time the dust settles. One idea would be to have a huge Orion launcher still hidden in a secret underground base for the PCs to find. the Orion spaceship is a rocket propelled by small atomic bombs, it could carry 100 men to Mars for example, its military purpose would be more sinister however. the payload of an Orion spaceship would be a giant thermonuclear bomb, if exploded from orbit, it could devastate a much larger region of the Earth's surface than it could from the ground. The Hydrogen bomb would be so heavy, that only a spaceship propelled by smaller atomic bombs could propell it into orbit. In short this is a doomsday weapon that would make all the other weapons in the US/Soviet arsenal look like fire crackers, of course it never had a chance to be used before the nuclear war overtook it, but it survived the exchange and still lies in its silo waiting. I'm sure a clevel GM could find a dramatic use for such a thing.