Accustomed to low-quality microelectronics, Soviet missile designers devised elaborate workarounds. Even the mathematics they plugged into their guidance computers was simpler, to minimize the strain on the onboard computer. Soviet ballistic missiles were generally told to follow a specific flight path toward their target, with the guidance computer adjusting the missile to put it back on the preprogrammed route if it deviated. By contrast, by the 1980s, American missiles calculated their own path to the target.
