The year of living dangerously: 1983

[Skybird]

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/haupt...elt-am-Abgrund

This is the link for a German 45 docu on the year 1983 that I have seen this night. It was titled "Welt am Abgrund" and described the year 1983's extreme military crisis of which in this combination of links I never have thought before and that described events of which I never have heared. To sum it up: 1983 made the Kuba crisis look like a friendly picnic in the forest. And that is no joke - we are lucky that we are still here.

Presented by a well-known German historian, who has had several books and TV docus, mainly on the Nazi era, and basing on former American, German, British and Soviet militaries, spies and the CIA's chief historian confirming the claimed facts, the film describes several events from 1981 to 1983, an era of very strong American pressure and provocations against the USSR i order to test their military reaction times and patterns and to identitfy their radar stations. In 1981 a massive NATO fleet of 83 combat units and three carriers entered deep into the Northen Sea, and obviously penetrated much more into the Northern Norwegian Sea than was previously known - the units were not detected due to new active electronic countermeasures supressing Soviet radar. The fleet reached to striking distance of Murmansk before the Soviets knew it was there, and American Navy fighters started weeks of almost-hot dogfights with Soviet interceptors, sometimes offshore the coast around Murmansk. - The Soviets needed to understand this as a preparation for a preemptive attack - and they did.

1983 the US Navy again tested and provoced the Soviet air defence, this time in the area of Camchatka, whose defence perimeter was intruded by three carrier groups simultaneously, and again weeks anmd weeks of simulated attacks were flown, fdorcing the Soviets to fully acitvate their radar network and give away their station's locations and reaction patterns. It was in this setting that the Korean jumbo entered the airspace over Camchatka which just short time before was "raided" by American fighters and bombers, and the SAoviets still were at high alert due to the exchnage with the Americans, so they identified the civilian airliner as an American bomber, and shot it down. - Again, the Soviets necessarily had to take these events as a provocation and a preparation for an attack.

On 23. September was the day when mankind was more lucky than ever before. A new "Kosmos" spy satellite with defective software code misidentified the sunbeams of the raising sun at the Earth'S horizon as a missile launch in Montana, and triggered a major missile alert with the Soviet missile forces. Four more sunbeams triggered four more " missile" detections, and the Soviets were fully convinced that it was no test or false alarm, but this time it was real. Full alert was given, and by orders and regular routines this should have been the end of mankinds story. Just the Soviet officer who was in command decided to not obey the machine, and to judge that a strike with just 5 missiles, out of the3 blue, makes no sense, and he refused to press the button.

IN OTHER WORDS, IF THE SATELLITE WITH THE DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE WOULD HAVE REPORTED A STREAM OF DETECTED "MISSILES", THEN NOONE OF US WOULD BE HERE ANYMORE TO TELL THE STORY.

1983 was the year when the Marines were bombed in Beirut, with the result that the US military went on high alert around the globe. The Pershing-2s arrived in Germany, increasing the range of nuclear weapons on German soil from targets that still wre inside German borders, to ranges so that now Moscow could be struck, and this at a time when the Soviets already were turned into paranoids by the years of American provocations and serious incidents. And in this climate their intel then revealed to them that after the yearly autmun maneuvers of NATO, named REFORGER, all Western governments and the American president suddenly took a dive and disappeared in nuclear bunkers. This was called "Abel Archer", a test to exmaine the reaction patterns and mechnaism of NATO in case of a Nuclear war. Of course it was a maneuver, a cosim only, but after the past two years and Reagan have doomed the USSR to be the empire of evil, this last observation was too much: Moscow now was absolutely convinced that a NATO first strike was imminent.

It became worse when during Able Archer the firing codes for nuclear weapon stations around the world were transmitted, increasing the radio traffic which ELINT by the Sopviets of course detected. It was then when the Russians fully were in panic mode and knew that the worst nightmare of mankind, Armageddon, was inevitably coming.

And Western intel had no clue about the mood and fears and the alertness of the Soviets. Not good. They just started to note that the Warsaw Pact suddenly started to fully mobilise, for reasons "unknown".

This was the second time in 1983 when the fate of the world laid in the hand of just one single person, a British-Russian spy who worked for bpoth sides and whose latest orders for Moscow made him realising that Moscow was in panic and prepared for all-out war. He let the Brits know.

Now you know why in that late time of 1983 Roinald Reagan suddenly was moving to his ranch and many pictures and TV spots showed him living a peaceful, relaxed. In his memoires, Reagan said that 1983 made him feel deeply depressed when he realsied how close to the final abyss the world has been in this crisis - which most people have not taken note of, and did not even be aware of. Reagan had ejected at high speed from Able Archer and by those news snippets wanted to send an emergency communication to the Soviets: look, I live here peacefully and treat my horses - is this what a presidnet looks like who is about to launch world war III...?

There was a single day in that crisis where the Soviet bombers around Berlin for the first and the only time ever throughout the cold war had all left their shelters, were aligned close to the runways, pilots in cockpit, engines running, and live nuclear weapons under their wings. They were ready to go to nuclear war at the snipping of two fingers. Compared to that, the Cuba crisis was tame, and never was that close to initial allout nuclear war, because the Americans also always have reserved the preemptiver use of nuclear weapons - and German towns and cities were no American towns and cities, were they... WWIII - alwaqys would have started with the complete obliteration of the 100-200 biggest German cities and their surroundings in the first 30 minutes - both from Soviet and American nukes.

Guys, we are lucky that we are still here. And all that just becasue of some lines of junk code - the satellite was not defective, the code just was written bad.

Think of these events and the psychological reactions they triggered, before next time you uncritically embrace the fututre of fully automatted war technology and plans. That is true for robots, that is true for Star wars defence initiatives and missile shields, SSBNs and satellite networks. Not only is there no freedom from remaining risk - but there also always is the unpredictability of human psychology, and simple old fashioned bad luck.

Depending on luck is no wise strategy.

[Onkel Neal]

Pretty interesting. I often wonder, even now that the Cold War tensions are behind us, what are the chances that something could still "go wrong" and trigger a nuclear event?

Of course, one part of the article is naively misleading: That us American are the only power to "always have reserved the preemptiver use of nuclear weapons". Pfft! As if. The Russians and any other nuclear power reserve the same option, they just say otherwise.

[Reece]

Certainly an eye opener, amazing how it can boil down to a decision of just one man, and if that person was not of sound mind...

A good read Skybird.

Originally Posted by Reece

amazing how it can boil down to a decision of just one man, and if that person was not of sound mind...

A common misconception....the two man rule goes all the way to the top.

The president, or his legal successor, and the Secratary of Defense or his legal successor must be in agreement to initiate the use of 'special weapons'.

[Reece]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

A common misconception....the two man rule goes all the way to the top.

The president, or his legal successor, and the Secratary of Defense or his legal successor must be in agreement to initiate the use of 'special weapons'.

What about other countries though, China, future DPRK?

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

A common misconception....the two man rule goes all the way to the top.

The president, or his legal successor, and the Secratary of Defense or his legal successor must be in agreement to initiate the use of 'special weapons'.

In the Soviet Union it was a three man rule. At least in the silos, two Rokeshki (SP?) and a Zampolit.

I think at the upper end it requires the President (General Secretary in Soviet days), Defense Minister, and Chief of the General Staff.

Since the OP article only dealt with one country I will only speak to that. And the misconception that only the president can initiate nuclear war. That isn't entirely accurate. That was my point.

Certainly other nations have controls.

[breadcatcher101]

That was a great find, Skybird.

It explains why the airliner was shot down as well as Reagan's trip to CA. I had no idea of our military being in those areas as I am sure many did not.

I have always believed that if war would come between the US and USSR, the day, so to speak, it would be because of some sort of malfunction or of some crazed cowboy's actions.

Both countries know the capabilities of the other and with logic would not launch a strike, known as MAD.

It also shows the importance of having the human element in there as well and to not rely on the machines alone.

Way back there was a movie and book about something like this called "Fail Safe". It showed the fault of total automation and what it could--and did lead to.

After reading your post the year 1984 now has even more special meaning to me.

[Skybird]

All that stuff is not really new, with two exceptions: the deep Northern penetration of nthe NATO armada and the simulated attack on Murmansk in 1981, and the wide scale to which Soviet preparation for a nuclear war had come in 1983. But Able Archer, the Soviet reaction called RYAN, and all the other stuff, is nothing all new for historians.

The CIA's chief historian said that Soviet Lieutenant-Colonel who during the Montana "missile launch" decided not to press the button, to him and many of his American and British colleagues is a true hero. Note that the nColonel already had been given green light from the top in the Kreml to con tinue according to the plans and the system'S preplanned stages. Everybody in the Kreml was sure that the Americans were striking. A 2-man-rule at the top w no longer applied, the system was no longer safe, but hot. The tragic anbd perverse note here is that after he had saved the world and mankind, the Colonel nevertheless received disciplinary punishment for having ignored orders and having decided independently. They called it insubordination.

Wikipedia lists m ost of the story,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

but the docu yesterday just opened my eyes to how close it was. Wiki gets it right, but still leaves it all looking tame and relatively harmless. The huge almost-hot confrontation between Americans and Soviets first at the North Cape and two years later in the West Pacific, do not get mentioned or correctly covered.

I rememeber 1983. I was at school, life was easy and everything was gay. Strange to now learn that in those weeks and months when nobody of us was aware of anything happening and just lived his life, the world has been that very very close to the abyss. A single man'S insubordination, and just some minutes - that's all what saved us.

[breadcatcher101]

I was wondering what happened to the officer who failed to push the button and you answered the question for me, written up for saving the world.

In 1983 I was with the DOD, Dept. of Defense in LA. All of us were pretty hip on things that were happening at that time. We had heard that a US warplane had shadowed the airliner just before it was shot down and assumed that the Russians had thought it was one of our planes. It is news to me of the massive force we had in that area though. At that time my position was in aerospace applications and although the test area I was in was shared by the navy none of us caught on to all you posted.

I do recall how strange it was that everyone was covering Reagan in CA like they were with everything else going on. Like "Big deal, what is so special about him being on his ranch of all things?"

He must have downed quite a bit of jelly beans during that time. It was around then too, maybe earlier that in joking around he said into a mic which he thought wasn't on that we would began bombing in 30 minutes.

[krashkart]

So few in power playing games with billions of lives. Lovely. Just... lovely.

We can fire their sorry butts, no matter where we live.


Skybird, that is possibly the most frightening thing I've read about in a long time. I was seven years old in '83. I don't recall watching the news, I only remember sunny skies and green grass -- play time. I had a very real fear of nuclear weapons/warfare, and it now appears that my fears back then were not very far off the mark. The actions pointed out in this article make me absolutely sick to my stomach; I looked up to Reagan because he was the President - a hero in the eyes of a child. We task idiots like that with our safety? Man, oh man.

[Oberon]

Stanislav Petrov is a hero. The way things were at the time, what with Brezhnev's paranoia, his age, it could have easily gone further than it did had it not been clamped down at the source. What with Able Archer and the naval exercise, and the Korea flight, '83 was a damn touchy year.

In regards to what Neal said, AFAIK there's been two incidents since the fall of the curtain that has been a bit touchy. One was a Norweigian rocket launch that was mistaken for an SLBM, even though the Norweigians had warned the Russians of a launch. The second was at Pristina airport where the Russians occupied it and Wesley Clark ordered Mike Jackson to seize the airport, Mike Jackson refused to obey stating he did not want to start World War Three.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Pristina

[Gerald]

Yes there are many questions and answers, in the articles you refer to Sky, and since it's been nearly 30 years, there will still be that much of the truth will never rise to the surface

[Oberon]

One big question that will I suspect forever remain unanswered in regards to the Cold War will be the submarine incursions in Sweden.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Oberon

One big question that will I suspect forever remain unanswered in regards to the Cold War will be the submarine incursions in Sweden.

It depends on who you ask, a lot of material available on the "open" market, the Soviet Union began their explorations of Swedish waters east of Gotland early sixties then there are a number of other incidents that never publicly discredit shown, is there a year or situation as you think on the particular