<P> The whole idea of a missile gap was parodied in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in which a doomsday device is built by the Soviets because they had read in The New York Times that the US was working along similar lines and wanted to avoid a "Doomsday Gap ." As the weapon is set up to go off automatically if the USSR is attacked, which occurs as the movie progresses, the president is informed that all life on the surface will be killed off for a period of years . The only hope for survival is to select important people and place them deep underground in mine shafts until the radiation clears . The generals almost immediately begin to worry about a "mine shaft gap" between the US and Soviets . In reference to the alleged "missile gap" itself, General Turgidson mentions off - hand at one point that the United States actually has a five - to - one rate of missile superiority against the USSR . The Soviet ambassador himself also explains that one of the major reasons that the Soviets began work on the doomsday machine was that they realized that they simply could never match the rate of American military production (let alone, outproduce American missile construction). The doomsday machine cost only a small fraction of what the Soviets normally spent on defense in a single year . </P> <P> Missile Gap is also the title of a science fiction book by Charles Stross, which depicts an alternative resolution to the situation and the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis . </P>

Who complained of a missile gap between the united states and the soviet union