[HN Gopher] Nuclear Close Calls: Able Archer 83 (2018)
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       Nuclear Close Calls: Able Archer 83 (2018)
        
       Author : omnibrain
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2022-10-07 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.atomicheritage.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.atomicheritage.org)
        
       | chiph wrote:
       | I arrived at my base in Germany about 3 weeks after Able Archer
       | 83. By that time the US had realized that the Soviets had had a
       | knee-jerk reaction to the exercise and we were _gently_ winding
       | things down. We still had armored vehicles covering the gates for
       | a few days though.
       | 
       | What I have heard is that the Soviets reacted as badly as they
       | did because the exercise replicated what _they_ would have done:
       | Mobilize troops and hold an exercise in a neighboring country,
       | have senior political leadership go into bunkers and be involved
       | in war decisions. Broadcast distracting information while you
       | then attack. (Recent events in Ukraine should make this sound
       | familiar.)
       | 
       | Afterwards, the US never used actual leaders in an exercise like
       | this ever again. We made sure that senior leaders were visible
       | somewhere in public, and used stand-ins to role-play National
       | Command Authority (President, Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs,
       | Speaker of the House, etc.)
       | 
       | I didn't tell my mom about this until the other year. No reason
       | to worry her.
        
       | stefantalpalaru wrote:
        
       | jibe wrote:
       | _"[Able Archer] sounded no alarm bells in the U.S. Indications
       | and Warning system. United States commanders on the scene were
       | not aware of any pronounced superpower tension, and the Soviet
       | activities were not seen in their totality until long after the
       | exercise was over"_
       | 
       | This is my concern about the current tensions around Ukraine - we
       | really have no idea what's going on in Putin's head or his inner
       | circle. They could be calmly bluffing, or suicidal, or scared we
       | are about to preemptively assassinate them.
        
         | FredPret wrote:
         | I sure hope the NSA is right up in his grille
        
         | matthewdgreen wrote:
         | If they were scared NATO was about to preemptively attack them,
         | they probably wouldn't be moving air defense missiles out of
         | Russia (including as far away as St. Petersburg) [1] to move
         | them to Ukraine.
         | 
         | But if you really want to worry about this, you don't need to
         | consider the current war in Ukraine. You could look at this
         | article from 2017 that describes a long-term plan to equip the
         | U.S. submarine missile fleet with "superfuze" warheads that can
         | accurately destroy hardened missile silos, which completely
         | changes the strategic balance against Russia, in a way that
         | might make things more dangerous for everyone [2].
         | 
         | [1] https://bnn-news.com/russia-moves-missiles-from-st-
         | petersbur... [2] https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-
         | nuclear-force-moderni...
        
           | morpheos137 wrote:
           | Conventional air defense missiles don't amount to much in
           | case of nuclear war.
        
             | SimbaOnSteroids wrote:
             | In this case, hasn't NATO all but said their response to a
             | nuclear escalation would be an overwhelming conventional
             | strike.
        
       | matthewdgreen wrote:
       | I recently read "The Spy and the Traitor" which was an excellent
       | book all about Gordievsky, who is the UK-recruited KGB agent that
       | alerted the US to the risk.
       | 
       | Although the book is a great read and makes Gordievsky out to be
       | a hero, I couldn't help but notice that (1) most of the
       | intelligence Gordievsky passed to the US was beneficial to both
       | sides, as in this Able Archer example, and (2) that it was
       | mysterious how lucky Gordievsky was to escape (UK agents were
       | somehow able to drive him out of Moscow, after he was under
       | suspicion by the KGB and had repeatedly been interrogated using
       | drugs, which also mysteriously "didn't work"!) There is even a
       | section in the book where another KGB agent "defects" to the West
       | just long enough to give Gordievsky credibility, then "re-
       | defects" back to the Soviet Union (with apparently no negative
       | consequences.)
       | 
       | Anyway, I'm sure there's nothing to it, maybe it's just a case of
       | a true story that seems too good to be true. But if it was an
       | operation, I'm glad it saved us from repeating messes like this
       | one.
        
       | Adaptive wrote:
       | For those interested in further reading on this and many, many
       | other nuclear weapon safety incidents, I recommend the excellent
       | book "Command and Control" (also a documentary but the book is
       | significantly more comprehensive).
       | 
       | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-cont...
        
       | ok123456 wrote:
       | 'Deustchland 83' is a good series based on a fictionalization of
       | this event.
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-07 23:00 UTC)