Twelve years ago today, Russian radar technicians detected the launch of a fast-moving object from Norway's Andoya Island in the Barents Sea. Because of the radar's limited resolution, the crew concluded that the object's altitude and speed bore the signature of a multi-stage, submarine-launched U.S. nuclear missile. When the object separated into several sections just as the warheads of a Trident missile would, the technicians notified their superiors, who passed the alert up the chain of command. Within minutes, the on duty general relayed information from Krokus, a special notification terminal, to Kavkaz, the heart of the Russian military's command, control and communications (C3) system. Signals were then sent to three "nuclear footballs", electronic terminals in black suitcases that traveled with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, and Chief of General Staff Mikhail Kolesnikov. According to some accounts, Russian military doctrine left President Yeltsin with less than 5 minutes to determine whether an attack was in progress - and to order a retaliatory nuclear strike.
Ultimately, radar technicians at the Olenegorsk early-warning station notified President Yeltsin that the high-altitude object was headed away from Russia and out to sea. Weeks earlier, Norwegian and American scientists had notified 30 countries, including Russia, of their plan to launch a four-stage sounding rocket off the northwest coast of Norway in order to study the northern lights. Unfortunately, the radar crew at Olenegorsk had never been notified of the planned launch.
Experts disagree over whether the Norwegian rocket incident nearly caused a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia. Nikolai Devyanin, chief designer of the Cheget nuclear suitcase, claimed that by the time Yeltsin was alerted, the military's command-and-control system "was now operating in combat mode." Russian General Vladimir Dvorkin disagreed, stating that "there was nothing, not even in the very nascent form, in terms of taking any kind of retaliating measures". Some observers claim that Russia's network of military satellites provided Yeltsin with evidence that an American attack was not underway. Others, such as Geoffrey Forden, Pavel Podvig and Theodore A. Postol, wrote in the March 2000 edition of IEEE Spectrum that "the newest generation of Russian satellites, designed to warn against submarine missile attack" were still "inoperable" at the time.
Resource:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/russia/closecall/howclose.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/falsealarms.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/coldwar/shatter031598a.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
|