Right about this time in 1983, we had several of the scariest days of my life. I was a member of the Strategic Air Combat Operations Staff at Strategic Air Command headquarters, Offutt AFB, NE. We were in the middle of an annual nuclear war exercise called ABLE ARCHER 83. This was at the end of the first week of a two-week command post exercise that would culminate in an all-out nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.
We had just finished the first part of the exercise, up to the point that the NCA (National Command Authority, someone was playing the president) had given the "execution order" to launch the Major Attack Option. Down in the SAC Underground Command Post, our part in the exercise ended 30 minutes after the execution order. We estimated there were a couple of dozen Soviet nuclear warheads targeted toward the spot I was sitting, so we were presumed dead at that time. So thirty minutes after the exercise execution order, we could clean up our areas, climb the ramps out of the 3-story underground bunker, and go home (Everyone but the generals. They got onto a plane and took off to safety, leaving us worker bees there).
That's how it had always been in years before.
But that year it was a special exercise. That year, someone in the Pentagon had had the brilliant idea of combining all the services' annual nuclear war exercises into one big exercise. And, heck, let's get the NCA involved as well. Let's even get NATO in on it. Let's exercise the entire thing, everybody involved for the first time ever.
A lot of people may not remember how scary 1983 had already been. Just two months before, the Soviets had shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007, killing an American Congressman. A few weeks after that, the Soviet missile warning system had suffered a malfunction that appeared to them to be an American missile launch. One particular Soviet officer (correctly) guessed in time that a genuine American attack would consist of more than one missile and called off the Soviet retaliation.
And there had been many things the entire year, with the US poking the Bear quite relentlessly. Frankly, we did not realize how close to the edge the Soviets were. President Reagan would later write:
"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. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did."
So on that day, we'd gotten the execution order just before noon. I cleaned up my desk in the bunker and went up to my regular desk that was in the "first floor" of the Building 500 basement. I planned to check the morning message traffic and go home.
But I got a telephone call: "Report back to the Underground Command post immediately!" I hightailed it back down and was told, "The Soviets have reacted to the exercise."
I'm not going into all that we'd detected them doing, but it was serious. Very serious. Essentially, the entire first week we'd played of the "exercise" building to an all-out nuclear exchange suddenly started playing out for real over the next few days.
Wikipedia gives a pretty good outline of all that was going on, and there are a couple of videos about ABLE ARCHER 83 on YouTube that are decent. I'd recommend you check them out.
But none of them conveys the genuine terror we were feeling down in that bunker. We knew diplomats were working to calm down the Soviets, but we had to act on the premise that it was going to happen.
It was all still happening at the command post level--the president didn't raise the operational DEFCON because that would make things worse--but in the command post, we were truly preparing for nuclear war as furiously as we could. I didn't leave Building 500 for four days. SR-71 missions were flying like crazy out of Mildenhall and Kadena.
One colonel did crack a joke: "Dammit, we just bought a house!"
But during every briefing, the generals' faces were grim and as gray as concrete. I don't think I've ever seen consternation like that in men before.
We had just finished the first part of the exercise, up to the point that the NCA (National Command Authority, someone was playing the president) had given the "execution order" to launch the Major Attack Option. Down in the SAC Underground Command Post, our part in the exercise ended 30 minutes after the execution order. We estimated there were a couple of dozen Soviet nuclear warheads targeted toward the spot I was sitting, so we were presumed dead at that time. So thirty minutes after the exercise execution order, we could clean up our areas, climb the ramps out of the 3-story underground bunker, and go home (Everyone but the generals. They got onto a plane and took off to safety, leaving us worker bees there).
That's how it had always been in years before.
But that year it was a special exercise. That year, someone in the Pentagon had had the brilliant idea of combining all the services' annual nuclear war exercises into one big exercise. And, heck, let's get the NCA involved as well. Let's even get NATO in on it. Let's exercise the entire thing, everybody involved for the first time ever.
A lot of people may not remember how scary 1983 had already been. Just two months before, the Soviets had shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007, killing an American Congressman. A few weeks after that, the Soviet missile warning system had suffered a malfunction that appeared to them to be an American missile launch. One particular Soviet officer (correctly) guessed in time that a genuine American attack would consist of more than one missile and called off the Soviet retaliation.
And there had been many things the entire year, with the US poking the Bear quite relentlessly. Frankly, we did not realize how close to the edge the Soviets were. President Reagan would later write:
"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. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did."
So on that day, we'd gotten the execution order just before noon. I cleaned up my desk in the bunker and went up to my regular desk that was in the "first floor" of the Building 500 basement. I planned to check the morning message traffic and go home.
But I got a telephone call: "Report back to the Underground Command post immediately!" I hightailed it back down and was told, "The Soviets have reacted to the exercise."
I'm not going into all that we'd detected them doing, but it was serious. Very serious. Essentially, the entire first week we'd played of the "exercise" building to an all-out nuclear exchange suddenly started playing out for real over the next few days.
Wikipedia gives a pretty good outline of all that was going on, and there are a couple of videos about ABLE ARCHER 83 on YouTube that are decent. I'd recommend you check them out.
But none of them conveys the genuine terror we were feeling down in that bunker. We knew diplomats were working to calm down the Soviets, but we had to act on the premise that it was going to happen.
It was all still happening at the command post level--the president didn't raise the operational DEFCON because that would make things worse--but in the command post, we were truly preparing for nuclear war as furiously as we could. I didn't leave Building 500 for four days. SR-71 missions were flying like crazy out of Mildenhall and Kadena.
One colonel did crack a joke: "Dammit, we just bought a house!"
But during every briefing, the generals' faces were grim and as gray as concrete. I don't think I've ever seen consternation like that in men before.
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