COLD WAR HISTORY: ABLE ARCHER-THE NATO EXERCISE THAT ALMOST TRIGGERED ARMAGEDDON

1983 was, perhaps, the scariest Cold War year after the Cuban Missile Crisis

There’s a dark moment of Cold War history that’s all but forgotten except by scholars. In our new reality, it’s worth taking a look back at Exercise Able Archer.

Able Archer 83 (AA83), held in November 1983, was a ten-day NATO “command post” exercise that simulated a coordinated nuclear release. It was the concluding war game to Autumn Forge 83, which simulated a NATO conventional conflict in Europe.  Though both these exercises were annual occurrences, a combination of darkening political rhetoric, Soviet intelligence initiatives, and unfortunate coincidences led to “the 1983 War Scare,” a moment widely considered to be as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis (CMC).  While historians offer varying opinions on the severity of that danger, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence suggests that it was grave. Either way, like the CMC, the War Scare shaped the future of the Cold War by changing the attitude of an American President, in this case, Ronald Reagan.

 Reagan assumed office in 1981, intending to embolden US foreign policy against the Soviets. Carter had criticized the Soviet human rights record, and US relations with China had warmed, worrying the Soviets. Reagan’s get-tough rhetoric referred to the USSR as an “evil empire,” and he borrowed heavily to increase the US defense budget. Détente was a distant memory.

Heightening nuclear tensions, the US and USSR had recently reignited an atomic arms race in Europe.  The Soviets deployed a new, mobile SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on their western border in the 1970s.  In response, the US deployed the Pershing II and Griffin IRBMs in Europe in 1983. 

Mimicking American alarm over Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, the Soviets feared that the Pershing II could strike Moscow in under fifteen minutes. They believed the Griffin was invisible to radar and worried about its first strike capability. Increasing the risk of an accidental Soviet nuclear counterstrike, they adhered to a Launch on Warning (LOW) doctrine, a preemptive protocol employed when intelligence suggested an imminent attack.

To provide that intelligence, the KGB had initiated Operation RYAN,[1] which collated hard and soft data on US institutions into a primitive computer to predict the likelihood of an American strike. Moreover, the Soviets had deployed a technical warning detection system codenamed Oko. To illustrate the substantial risk of accidental war, weeks before AA83, Oko falsely indicated a NATO missile launch. Had a Soviet officer not instinctively ignored the warning, a nuclear response might have occurred.[2]

When the AA83 exercise began in November 1983, the tragic Soviet shootdown of KAL 007 had brought US-Soviet relations to a low ebb. AA83 simulated a Soviet leader initiating proxy battles in the Middle East that expanded to Eastern Europe. Following a chemical attack, the NATO exercise participants practiced a nuclear release protocol to halt the notional Soviet advance. Despite real-world tensions, it was all an exercise.

Yet several AA83 features made the Soviets believe the US might actually be preparing for a first strike. For instance, AA83 used new encryption techniques and procedures for the Griffin and Pershing.  Sixteen thousand soldiers had been airlifted as part of Autumn Forge.  Command posts had been shifted from Bonn to a field location.  AA83 also involved intentional “slips of the tongue,” such as a B-52 sorties mistakenly reported as nuclear strikes.  According to KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, the Russians reacted to these unusual indicators in the RYAN system by mobilizing troops and transporting nuclear missiles out of storage. War nearly occurred.[3]

A Special National Intelligence Estimate in 1984 downplayed the likelihood of nuclear war. However, a declassified 1990 Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board memo indicates significant war risk and notes that the US had failed to recognize the Soviets’ genuine fear.[4]  Either way, as Reagan wrote in his memoirs, he was surprised that “many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike.”  After the War Scare, Reagan and Gorbachev went on to eliminate a class of IRBMs, including Pershing IIs, Griffins, and SS-20s, and, later, the START treaty to reduce ICBMs.  In retrospect, like the CMC, the AA83 War Scare’s legacy was to help pivot a dark moment in the Cold War toward détente by influencing the attitude of an American President.

[1] RYAN is an acronym for Raketno-Yadernoe Napdenie, “Nuclear Missile Attack.”

[2] John Correll, “The Euromissile Showdown,” Air and Space Forces, February 1, 2020, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/the-euromissile-showdown/#:~:text=Deployment%20of%20the%20Soviet%20SS,medium%2Drange%20%E2%80%9CEuromissiles.%E2%80%9D.

[3] Nate Jones, ed., Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War (New York: The New Press, 2016).

[4] “The Soviet ‘War Scare’” (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, February 15, 1990), https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21038-4-pfiab-report-2012-0238-mr.