[HN Gopher] Nuclear Close Calls: Able Archer 83 (2018) ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-07 23:00 UTC)