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I don't believe you are correct about a full scale invasion of the U.S. There are two reasons. The Caspian Sea is a sea and not an ocean. The waves are a frac

I don't believe you are correct about a full scale invasion of the U.S. There are two reasons. The Caspian Sea is a sea and not an ocean. The waves are a fraction of the size of those in the Atlantic. If 'waves were roads' then you would need a four wheel drive equivalent of the 'sea monster' to make it an 'ocean monster'. Ground effect isn't ground effect in quite the same way if you have to fly 50m above the water instead of 5m. The other reason is that the Soviet Union did not have any realistic ambitions to invade the United States. Their thinking was much more defensive than Western Cold War thinkers were allowing their paranoia to believe.

mapt 6y ago
Ekranoplanes function better the larger they get. The Caspian Sea Monster was not the endpoint of ekranoplane engineering. It deals well with ~1m wave height. For the Black Sea / Mediterranean sea or the Baltic, a larger version would be required, and for the Atlantic or Pacific, larger still. You could plausibly even fly it over Arctic sea ice fields without bergs. Boeing was throwing around proposals for a ground effect aircraft several times this large in the early 2000's, with the largest bumping up against the weight range of naval destroyers at ~5000 tonnes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pelican https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pelican