Plus, the tubes allowed for quick and easy maintenance at Russia’s primitive airfields,
I don't buy the maintenance angle.
Modern solid-state avionics are swappable LRUs. Like lego, you plug and unplug them. Just as easy as tubes, in fact the exact and precise same. Plus you can drop them and they don't shatter.
Techs aren't out in the field desoldering surface-mount components and swapping capacitors, the are unplugging and plugging modules the same as unplugging and plugging in a vacuum tube.
I also don't buy the EMP angle. The metal that aircraft avionic components are encased in also serves as EMP shielding. Not that that matters, the effects of thermonuclear EMP effects are so poorly understood that anyone claiming to be able to predict them is a liar. An EMP in the upper atmosphere may fry well-shielded components 1 meter away from unshielded components if the unshielded components are disconnected and at a different angle to the blast than the shielded ones, and vice-versa. Every real-world analysis of EMP effects is punctuated by how seemingly random the effects are.
An analysis of the effects of STARFISH PRIME on the streetlights of Honolulu notes how random and unpredictable the outages were, and this is on unshielded long-wire circuits (ideal for soaking up EMP radiation).
USSR was using tubes because it was technologically far behind the West (it was still producing cars that were between 30 to even 50 years behind the West) and was under heavy sanctions. Soviet bloc made chips were actually less reliable and that's one of reasons why commie bloc TTL based computers were so unstable as they had either to import components from the West (see story of Karpiński and his K-202 architecture) if they wanted components that they were allowed to order them in the 1st place or smuggle them (which would not work for large scale) or use inferior in quality components produced within the bloc. Vacuum tubes were much harder to fuck up while production – hence more reliable than commie bloc TTL or LSI. How do I know? I am from one of countries that been in that bloc.
Comments
I don't buy the maintenance angle.
Modern solid-state avionics are swappable LRUs. Like lego, you plug and unplug them. Just as easy as tubes, in fact the exact and precise same. Plus you can drop them and they don't shatter.
Techs aren't out in the field desoldering surface-mount components and swapping capacitors, the are unplugging and plugging modules the same as unplugging and plugging in a vacuum tube.
I also don't buy the EMP angle. The metal that aircraft avionic components are encased in also serves as EMP shielding. Not that that matters, the effects of thermonuclear EMP effects are so poorly understood that anyone claiming to be able to predict them is a liar. An EMP in the upper atmosphere may fry well-shielded components 1 meter away from unshielded components if the unshielded components are disconnected and at a different angle to the blast than the shielded ones, and vice-versa. Every real-world analysis of EMP effects is punctuated by how seemingly random the effects are.
An analysis of the effects of STARFISH PRIME on the streetlights of Honolulu notes how random and unpredictable the outages were, and this is on unshielded long-wire circuits (ideal for soaking up EMP radiation).
Did High Altitude EMP Cause the Hawaiian Streetlight Incident? http://ece-research.unm.edu/summa/notes/SDAN/0031.pdf
USSR was using tubes because it was technologically far behind the West (it was still producing cars that were between 30 to even 50 years behind the West) and was under heavy sanctions. Soviet bloc made chips were actually less reliable and that's one of reasons why commie bloc TTL based computers were so unstable as they had either to import components from the West (see story of Karpiński and his K-202 architecture) if they wanted components that they were allowed to order them in the 1st place or smuggle them (which would not work for large scale) or use inferior in quality components produced within the bloc. Vacuum tubes were much harder to fuck up while production – hence more reliable than commie bloc TTL or LSI. How do I know? I am from one of countries that been in that bloc.