Able Archer 83
It simulated a period of heightened nuclear tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, leading to concerns that it could have been mistaken for a real attack by the Soviet Union.
The 1983 exercise, which began on November 7, 1983, introduced several new elements not seen in previous years, including a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, and the participation of heads of government.
[20] Gordievsky conjectured that Brezhnev and Andropov, who "were very, very old-fashioned and easily influenced ... by Communist dogmas", truly believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan would push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history".
In 1981 a group of 83 American, British, Canadian, and Norwegian ships led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower sailed through the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap undetected by Soviet radar and spy satellites, reaching the Kola Peninsula.
[30] In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chief of Naval Operations James D. Watkins said that the Soviet Union was "as naked as a jaybird [on the Kamchatka Peninsula], and they know it".
All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia and president of the anti-communist John Birch Society.
"[31] On March 23, 1983, Reagan announced one of the most ambitious and controversial components to this strategy, the Strategic Defense Initiative (labeled "Star Wars" by the media and critics).
While Reagan portrayed the initiative as a safety net against nuclear war, leaders in the Soviet Union viewed it as a definitive departure from the relative weapons parity of détente and an escalation of the arms race into space.
Yuri Andropov, who had become General Secretary following Brezhnev's death in November 1982, criticised Reagan for "inventing new plans on how to unleash a nuclear war in the best way, with the hope of winning it".
Part of his reasoning was that the system was new and known to have malfunctioned previously; also, a full-scale nuclear attack from the United States would involve thousands of simultaneous launches, not a single missile.
The investigation that followed revealed that the system indeed malfunctioned and the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds underneath the satellites' orbits.
A scenario released by NATO details the hypothetical lead-up to the Able Archer exercise, which was used by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., and the British Ministry of Defence in London.
The scenario envisioned proxy conflicts in Syria, South Yemen, and Iran escalating after Yugoslavia shifted to the Blue bloc with Orange forces invading Finland, Norway, and West Germany.
[40][41] A KGB telegram of February 17 described one likely scenario: In view of the fact that the measures involved in State Orange [a nuclear attack within 36 hours] have to be carried out with the utmost secrecy (under the guise of maneuvers, training etc.)
in the shortest possible time, without disclosing the content of operational plans, it is highly probable that the battle alarm system may be used to prepare a surprise RYaN [nuclear attack] in peacetime.
Robert McFarlane, who had assumed the position of National Security Advisor just two weeks earlier, realized the implications of such participation early in the exercise's planning and rejected it.
According to Moscow Centre's February 17 memo, It [is] of the highest importance to keep a watch on the functioning of communications networks and systems since through them information is passed about the adversary's intentions and, above all, about his plans to use nuclear weapons and practical implementation of these.
[47]Soviet intelligence appeared to substantiate these suspicions by reporting that NATO was indeed using unique, never-before-seen procedures as well as message formats more sophisticated than previous exercises, which possibly indicated the proximity of nuclear attack.
"[49] According to a 2013 analysis by the National Security Archive:[50] The Able Archer controversy has featured numerous descriptions of the exercise as so "routine" that it could not have alarmed the Soviet military and political leadership.
Today's posting reveals multiple non-routine elements, including: a 170-flight, radio-silent air lift of 19,000 US soldiers to Europe, the shifting of commands from "Permanent War Headquarters to the Alternate War Headquarters," the practice of "new nuclear weapons release procedures," including consultations with cells in Washington and London, and the "sensitive, political issue" of numerous "slips of the tongue" in which B-52 sorties were referred to as nuclear "strikes."
The CIA reported activity in the Baltic Military District and in Czechoslovakia, and it determined that nuclear-capable aircraft in Poland and East Germany were placed "on high alert status with readying of nuclear strike forces".
He informed his superior, General Billy M. Minter, of "unusual activity" in the Eastern Bloc but suggested that they wait until the end of the exercise to see if the behavior was caused by it, thereby reducing the possibility of a nuclear exchange.
Upon learning of the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 by way of the double agent Oleg Gordievsky, a British SIS asset, President Reagan commented, "I don't see how they could believe that—but it's something to think about.
[59][60] Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, who at the time was chief of the main operations directorate of the Soviet General Staff, told Cold War historian Don Orbendorfer that he had never heard of Able Archer.
"[8] Robert Gates, deputy director for Intelligence during Able Archer 83, has published thoughts on the exercise that dispute this conclusion: Information about the peculiar and remarkably skewed frame of mind of the Soviet leaders during those times that has emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union makes me think there is a good chance—with all of the other events in 1983—that they really felt a NATO attack was at least possible and that they took a number of measures to enhance their military readiness short of mobilization.
The decision of Gen. Perroots was described as "fortuitous", noting "[he] acted correctly out of instinct, not informed guidance", suggesting that had the depth of Soviet fear been fully realized, NATO may have responded differently.
On October 10, 1983, just over a month before Able Archer 83, President Reagan viewed a television film about Lawrence, Kansas, being destroyed by a nuclear attack titled The Day After.
[22][67][68] In his memoirs, Reagan, without specifically mentioning Able Archer 83, wrote of a 1983 realization: Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans.
[71] Individuals like Gordon Barras, Raymond Garthoof, Beatrice Heuser, Mark Kramer, and Votjech Mastny challenge the narrative surrounding the incident that occurred in 1983.
That is not to say that the narrative surrounding the event does not have some merit in its core, as a survey conducted by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) in 1989 confirmed that there was a belief that the US sought to have military superiority over the USSR.
