[3][4] An example of fail-deadly and mutual assured destruction deterrence, it can initiate the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by sending a pre-entered highest-authority order from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Strategic Missile Force Management to command posts and individual silos if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity, and pressure sensors even with the commanding elements fully destroyed.
By most accounts, it is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated during times of crisis; however, as of 2009[update], it was said to remain fully functional and able to serve its purpose when needed.
[5][6] Accounts differ on whether the system, once activated by the country's leadership, will launch missiles fully automatically or if there is still a human approval process involved, with newer sources suggesting the latter.
To ensure its functionality the system was designed to be mostly automatic, with the ability to decide an adequate retaliatory strike on its own with no (or minimal) human involvement in the event of an all-out attack.
This made an effective first strike difficult, because the opponent would have time to launch on warning to reduce the risk of their forces being destroyed on the ground.
The Soviet Union took steps to ensure that nuclear retaliation, and hence deterrence, remained possible even if its leadership were to be destroyed in a surprise attack.
[2] In contrast, Thompson argues that Perimeter's function was to limit acts of misjudgment by political or military leadership in the tight decision-making window between SLBM/cruise missile launches and impact.
This system is believed to be able to track the intensity of communications on military frequencies, receive telemetric signals from the command posts, measure the level of radiation on the surface and in the vicinity, which combined with the detection of short-term seismic disturbance, is inferred as a multiple-warhead nuclear strike.
Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil.
In the early 1990s, several former high-ranking members of the Soviet military and the Central Committee of the Communist Party, in a series of interviews to the American defense contractor BDM, admitted the existence of the Dead Hand, making somewhat contradictory statements concerning its deployment.
[15] Colonel General Varfolomey Korobushin, former Deputy Chief of Staff of Strategic Rocket Forces, in 1992 said that the Russians had a system, to be activated only during a crisis, that would automatically launch all missiles, triggered by a combination of light, radioactivity and overpressure, even if every nuclear-command center and all leadership were destroyed.
[18] Although both Katayev and Korobushin claimed that the mechanism had already been deployed, Viktor Surikov, Deputy Director of the Central Scientific Research Institute for General Machine Building (TsNIIMash) in 1976–1992, confirmed in 1993 that the Soviets had designed the automatic launch system with seismic, light and radiation sensors, but said that the design had been ultimately rejected by Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev on advice of Korobushin and never materialized.
The automated system in theory would allow Moscow to respond to a Western attack even if top military commanders had been killed and the capital incinerated.
Contrary to some Western beliefs, Dr. Blair says, many of Russia's nuclear-armed missiles in underground silos and on mobile launchers can be fired automatically.
In a 2007 article, Ron Rosenbaum quotes Blair as saying that Dead Hand is "designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike".
If that were the case, he [the Soviet leader] would flip on a system that would send a signal to a deep underground bunker in the shape of a globe where three duty officers sat.
[22]In 2011, the commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel General Sergey Karakaev [ru], in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, confirmed the operational state of the Perimeter assessment and communication system.