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Happy no thermonuclear war day anniversary
« on: 2009-09-26 20:34:06 » |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
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It was September 26, 1983. Only three weeks earlier, the Soviet military had shot down a South Korean passenger jet, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, that had entered into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board; many Americans were killed, including US congressman Larry McDonald. NATO was soon to begin the military exercise Able Archer 83, preparations for which had been interpreted by the KGB as preparation for a first strike.
Stanislav Petrov, an Air Defence lieutenant colonel, was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow which housed the command center of the Soviet Early warning system, code-named Oko. Petrov's responsibilities included observing the satellite early warning network and notifying his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack against the Soviet Union. If notification was received from the early-warning systems that inbound missiles had been detected, the Soviet Union's strategy was an immediate nuclear counter-attack against the United States (launch on warning), specified in the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.
Shortly after midnight, the bunker's computers reported that an intercontinental ballistic missile was heading toward the Soviet Union from the US. Petrov considered the detection a computer error, since a United States first-strike nuclear attack would be likely to involve hundreds of simultaneous missile launches, in order to disable any Soviet means for a counterattack. Furthermore, the satellite system's reliability had been questioned in the past. Petrov dismissed the warning as a false alarm, though accounts of the event differ as to whether he notified his superiors or not after he concluded that the computer detections were false and that no missile had been launched. Later, the computers identified four additional missiles in the air, all directed towards the Soviet Union. Petrov again suspected that the computer system was malfunctioning, despite having no other source of information to confirm his suspicions. The Soviet Union's land radar was incapable of detecting missiles beyond the horizon, and waiting for it to positively identify the threat would limit the Soviet Union's response time to minutes.
Had Petrov reported incoming American missiles, his superiors might have launched an assault against the United States, precipitating a corresponding nuclear response from the United States. Petrov declared the system's indications a false alarm. Later, it was apparent that he was right: no missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected with cross-reference to a geostationary satellite.
Petrov later indicated the influences in this decision included: that he had been told a US strike would be all-out, so that five missiles seemed an illogical start; that the launch detection system was new and, in his view, not yet wholly trustworthy; and that ground radars were still failing to pick up any corroborative evidence, even after minutes of delay.
Bruce Blair, an expert on Cold War nuclear strategies, now president of the World Security Institute in Washington, D.C., says the U.S.–Soviet relationship at that time "had deteriorated to the point where the Soviet Union as a system — not just the Kremlin, not just Andropov, not just the KGB — but as a system, was geared to expect an attack and to retaliate very quickly to it. It was on hair-trigger alert. It was very nervous and prone to mistakes and accidents... The false alarm that happened on Petrov’s watch could not have come at a more dangerous, intense phase in U.S.–Soviet relations." In an interview televised nationally in the United States, Blair said, "The Russians saw a U.S. government preparing for a first strike, headed by a President capable of ordering a first strike." Regarding the incident involving Petrov, he said, "I think that this is the closest we've come to accidental nuclear war."
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former KGB chief of foreign counterintelligence who knew Soviet leader Yuri Andropov well, says that Andropov's distrust of American leaders was profound. It is conceivable that if Petrov had declared the satellite warnings valid, such an erroneous report could have provoked the Soviet leadership into becoming bellicose. Kalugin says, "The danger was in the Soviet leadership thinking, 'The Americans may attack, so we better attack first.'"
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