 |
| Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer (SS-20) with three 150 kt MIRV warheads |
In 1983, tensions between Washington and Moscow rose to a dangerous level. The Soviet Union, who had always trailed the United States in the field of technology, finally closed the gap in military power by an immense increase of their nuclear arsenal to more than 11,000 warheads. Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, convinced that the U.S. would attack the USSR sooner or later, was determined to get a strategic advantage. He also initiated operation RYAN (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie or Nuclear Missile Attack), a worldwide hunt for information that would indicate an imminent first strike by the United States.
Tension Builds Up
U.S. President Ronald Reagan on the other hand wanted to regain superiority by taking a technological lead. The U.S. also tried to provoke enormous defense expenditures by the USSR to bring them on the verge of bankruptcy. In March 1983, Reagan presented his Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI, also referred to as the Star Wars program. Once developed and in place, SDI would neutralize any Soviet missile that was launched towards the United States. This would render the Soviet strategic arsenal ineffective.
Reagan also decided to deploy Pershing II nuclear missiles across Europe, at the doorstep of the USSR. It was a game of poker with high stakes and it caused a very rapid deterioration of relations between the two powers. In a provocative speech, Reagan called the USSR an Evil Empire.
Two events were the catalyst of a catastrophic chain of events. The first one occurred on September 1, when Korean Air Lines flight 007 deviated from its assigned route when its autopilot system operated in the wrong mode and KAL 007 accidentally strayed without permission into Soviet airspace.
Soviet Command, convinced that the Boeing 747 was a spy plane, sent four Sukoi and MiG interceptors. Indeed, USSR air space was frequently violated by USAF airplanes, gathering technical intelligence, and the airliner flew over Soviet military installations in the Kuril Islands. The SU-15's were ordered to shoot down the plane. All 269 civilian passengers and crew aboard were killed. The Western world was outraged and condemned the Soviets.
The second event occurred on the night of September 26. Inside a bunker of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces near Moscow, Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov resumed his night shift. His bunker was part of an early warning system with satellites, to detect incoming U.S. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Suddenly, their computers detected a missile launch and minutes later gave a missile attack alarm.
Eventually, the system reported five missiles. Indoctrinated that any U.S. nuclear strike would be massive, Petrov distrusted the computer reports and ignored the alarm. He could not believe that they would only launch five missiles. He was right and it proved to be a life saving decision. The event was kept secret but the flawed early warning system showed the vulnerability of the Soviets and made them even more nervous.
Tickling the Soviet Nerves
The seeds for a dangerous chain of events were sown. Then, on November 2, NATO started a large command post exercise, codenamed Able Archer. The exercise was a simulation of a conflict that culminated in a nuclear war.
There were no real troop movements involved. It was a communications only exercise with signals troops across Western Europe, sending coded messages, and lead from a NATO nuclear bunker in Belgium. The scenario included a gradually escalating situation, with communications between heads of states, periods of total radio silence and eventually a DEFCON 1 alert, indicating an imminent nuclear attack.
Russian forces intercepted the communications and were puzzled. Their traffic analysis told them there was a huge event going on. NATO used the words Exercise Exercise Exercise on each of their messages. However, after the events one month earlier, the Soviets were convinced that any attack by NATO would start under disguise of an exercise.
The encrypted communications and unexplained radio blackouts (simply pauses in the war game) added to the paranoia of the Russians. Moreover, Soviet intelligence officers abroad were expected to report signs of an imminent attack. Reports that stated otherwise were unacceptable for the KGB leaders and the Kremlin. Therefore, the agents, in good KGB bureaucratic tradition, reported non-existing signs.
By November 7, according to the exercise scenario, NATO forces failed to counter a chemical attack and preparations were made to initiate a large nuclear strike. Alarmed by the increased coded communications between NATO countries, the U.K. and the United States, the Soviet Army and Air force initiated a massive war-time deployment of troops in Eastern Europe and their nuclear arsenal was prepared for launch, thumbs ready on the buttons! Their Northern Fleet steamed to the Baltic and nuclear missile submarines disappeared under the sea surface.
Radio Silence, Red Flags and Common Sense
On the eve of November 8, NATO command decided to start the nuclear attack. They pushed the big red button, exercise Able Archer was finished and everyone went home. Total silence in the aether. Little were they aware that Soviet command expected the attack to come on a holiday, when the Russians were off-guard, and November 7 was Revolution Day in Russia. When Able Archer ended, all went deadly quiet and the Soviets were ready to counter the attack or initiate a pre-emptive attack. Fortunately, they kept their nerves together, waited and... nothing happened.
When President Reagan was informed by intelligence and spies about how scared the Soviets really were, and how U.S. intelligence failed to notice how close they were to a nuclear war, he was shocked and decided to drastically change the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Reagan soon started talks with the new Soviet leader, Michail Gorbatsjov. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Being stationed in West Germany, from early 1983 on for many years, I'm glad that lessons were learned from that frightening event. It could have been my and everyone else's last year.
Learning from the Past
There is an excellent paper by Nathan Bennett Jones about Operation RYAN and Able Archer (pdf) and the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence published a piece on the 1983 Soviet War Scare. Paul Dibb from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote a special report on the 1983 nuclear war scare. The National Archive's Able Archer Sourcebook provides many declassified documents. If you're into reading, I can recommend General John Hackett's 1979 book The Third World War, August 1985 (see Amazon) about how a war in Europe would look like if they bring tactical nukes on the war theatre. It's a fictionalized but very accurate scenario.
A Cold Cold Year
1983 was a pretty eventful year, with Secretary Yuri Andropov inviting Samantha Reed Smith to visit the USSR in July, after she wrote him a letter. In August, NSA evacuated eleven tons of equipment in total secrecy from the U.S embassy in Moscow. The operation called the GUNMAN Project came after receiving intel about sophisticate bugs in embassy equipment. In September the mistakenly shootdown of KAL 007 and the Soviet early warning system for missiles going haywire, almost causing an all-out nuclear war. To top the year off, ABC aired in November the movie The Day After that gave an idea of how a nuclear war would look like, the movie that scared Ronald Reagan like hell.
Reagan also decided to deploy Pershing II nuclear missiles across Europe, at the doorstep of the USSR. It was a game of poker with high stakes and it caused a very rapid deterioration of relations between the two powers. In a provocative speech, Reagan called the USSR an Evil Empire.
Two events were the catalyst of a catastrophic chain of events. The first one occurred on September 1, when Korean Air Lines flight 007 deviated from its assigned route when its autopilot system operated in the wrong mode and KAL 007 accidentally strayed without permission into Soviet airspace.
 |
| Click to visit TIME 1983 |
The second event occurred on the night of September 26. Inside a bunker of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces near Moscow, Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov resumed his night shift. His bunker was part of an early warning system with satellites, to detect incoming U.S. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Suddenly, their computers detected a missile launch and minutes later gave a missile attack alarm.
Eventually, the system reported five missiles. Indoctrinated that any U.S. nuclear strike would be massive, Petrov distrusted the computer reports and ignored the alarm. He could not believe that they would only launch five missiles. He was right and it proved to be a life saving decision. The event was kept secret but the flawed early warning system showed the vulnerability of the Soviets and made them even more nervous.
Tickling the Soviet Nerves
The seeds for a dangerous chain of events were sown. Then, on November 2, NATO started a large command post exercise, codenamed Able Archer. The exercise was a simulation of a conflict that culminated in a nuclear war.
There were no real troop movements involved. It was a communications only exercise with signals troops across Western Europe, sending coded messages, and lead from a NATO nuclear bunker in Belgium. The scenario included a gradually escalating situation, with communications between heads of states, periods of total radio silence and eventually a DEFCON 1 alert, indicating an imminent nuclear attack.
The encrypted communications and unexplained radio blackouts (simply pauses in the war game) added to the paranoia of the Russians. Moreover, Soviet intelligence officers abroad were expected to report signs of an imminent attack. Reports that stated otherwise were unacceptable for the KGB leaders and the Kremlin. Therefore, the agents, in good KGB bureaucratic tradition, reported non-existing signs.
By November 7, according to the exercise scenario, NATO forces failed to counter a chemical attack and preparations were made to initiate a large nuclear strike. Alarmed by the increased coded communications between NATO countries, the U.K. and the United States, the Soviet Army and Air force initiated a massive war-time deployment of troops in Eastern Europe and their nuclear arsenal was prepared for launch, thumbs ready on the buttons! Their Northern Fleet steamed to the Baltic and nuclear missile submarines disappeared under the sea surface.
Radio Silence, Red Flags and Common Sense
On the eve of November 8, NATO command decided to start the nuclear attack. They pushed the big red button, exercise Able Archer was finished and everyone went home. Total silence in the aether. Little were they aware that Soviet command expected the attack to come on a holiday, when the Russians were off-guard, and November 7 was Revolution Day in Russia. When Able Archer ended, all went deadly quiet and the Soviets were ready to counter the attack or initiate a pre-emptive attack. Fortunately, they kept their nerves together, waited and... nothing happened.
When President Reagan was informed by intelligence and spies about how scared the Soviets really were, and how U.S. intelligence failed to notice how close they were to a nuclear war, he was shocked and decided to drastically change the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Reagan soon started talks with the new Soviet leader, Michail Gorbatsjov. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Being stationed in West Germany, from early 1983 on for many years, I'm glad that lessons were learned from that frightening event. It could have been my and everyone else's last year.
 |
| Reykjavík Summit with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The talks were the run-up to the INF and START treaties. |
Learning from the Past
There is an excellent paper by Nathan Bennett Jones about Operation RYAN and Able Archer (pdf) and the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence published a piece on the 1983 Soviet War Scare. Paul Dibb from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote a special report on the 1983 nuclear war scare. The National Archive's Able Archer Sourcebook provides many declassified documents. If you're into reading, I can recommend General John Hackett's 1979 book The Third World War, August 1985 (see Amazon) about how a war in Europe would look like if they bring tactical nukes on the war theatre. It's a fictionalized but very accurate scenario.
A Cold Cold Year
1983 was a pretty eventful year, with Secretary Yuri Andropov inviting Samantha Reed Smith to visit the USSR in July, after she wrote him a letter. In August, NSA evacuated eleven tons of equipment in total secrecy from the U.S embassy in Moscow. The operation called the GUNMAN Project came after receiving intel about sophisticate bugs in embassy equipment. In September the mistakenly shootdown of KAL 007 and the Soviet early warning system for missiles going haywire, almost causing an all-out nuclear war. To top the year off, ABC aired in November the movie The Day After that gave an idea of how a nuclear war would look like, the movie that scared Ronald Reagan like hell.
COLD WAR CONVERSATIONS - The shooting down of KAL007, the Able Archer exercise and the nuclear war scare of 1983 is a fascinating interview with Brian Morra who served as Chief of Intelligence Analysis for US Forces Japan at Yakota airbase when KAL007 was shot down. He describes incidents between Soviet and US military aircraft after the shootdown, which almost caused a direct conflict. He wrote the fictional book The Able Archers, partly based on his personal experience of the incident and its aftermath.The Able Archer 1983 The Brink of Apocalypse documentary explains exercise Able Archer, the Soviet reaction to it and how close we were to nuclear war.
Related Posts on This Blog
- 3 Seconds from World War 3 The story of a Soviet satellite that mistakenly triggered a missile warning.
- Russia’s Modern Early Warning Systems Old and new early waring satellites and radar.
- Mysterious Cold War Signals Detailed description of the Duga phased array over-the-horizon radar.
- Dead Hand Revealed How the Soviets could still execute a retaliatory nuclear strike, even if a U.S. strike was detected too late.
- US Strategic Intelligence on the USSR and miscalculation of Soviet aggressiveness during the Cold War.
3 comments:
I watched the video you referenced and it is hair raising to think that we were actually that close to a nuclear war back then. I was only 12 years old then but I do remember watching "The Day After" on TV. I think we were all frightened at the prospect of nuclear war back then and we were glad to see the end of the cold war in 1989.
Actually operation Able Archer came to an abrupt end, amid fears of a nuclear war between the two powers. The activities of russian side was interpreted as an imminent preparation of a nuclear assault on Western targets, and thus in the spirit of not frightening them from a Nato led nuclear attack, Nato and U.S dropped the exercises ahead of schedual.
I have not watched the video yet, but will. I came across this blog because I was researching information on REFORGER 83. I served in one of the units that participated in it. I always thought that I was fortunate to have served during peace-time, only to find out later how REALLY BAD the situation was. Thank you to the people who de-escalated the crisis!
Post a Comment