Yabbut they probably knew it wasn't going to happen

Continuing to peruse my old SciAms I find, in February 1994, Philip Morrison, Kosta Tsipis and Jerome Weisner telling us that "U.S. forces were shaped for conflict with a superpower. The emerging multilateral world calls for a smaller, more flexible, and far less expensive military."

That's right folks, "When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the U.S. was still spending more than $300 billion a year for a military that included 350 ships, 16 active army divisions, more than 3,00 planes, and more than 25,000 nuclear warheads. Such massive forces place an unacceptable burden on the American economy and saddle the nation with a military built around an unrealistic scenario of vast global conflict."

1994.