On September 26, 1983, the planet came terrifyingly close to a nuclear holocaust.. In fact, U.S. Department of Defense officials familiar with the Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC) admit that, even if the center had been active during the Norwegian rocket incident, its only effect would have been to facilitate the launch notification issued before the NASA launch. That may have been the first time this rare alignment had occurred since the system became operational the previous year.
However, within minutes of the original alert, the officers had reviewed the raw data from the DSP satellites and checked with the early-warning radars ringing the country.
On 26 September 1983, the nuclear early-warning system of the Soviet Union reported the launch of multiple USAF Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles from bases in the United States. Pilot Charles Maultsby was supposed to use celestial navigation to find his way, but halfway through the trip his view of the night sky became hopelessly obscured by the glow of the aurora borealis, or “northern lights.” With no visual markers to guide him, Maultsby soon drifted far off c… However, the Soviets chose a different method of spotting missile launches. '”Le foto presenti su questo sito sono state in larga parte prese da Internet e quindi valutate di pubblico dominio. After the training tape incident, the U.S. Department of Defense constructed a separate facility to train operators so that a training tape could not again be inserted into the computer running the nation's early-warning system. EdS September 26, 2019, 1:38pm #1. It was on hair-trigger alert. Bruce Blair, an expert on Cold War nuclear strategies and former president of the World Security Institu… It was the first and, as far as I know, also the last time that such a thing had happened, except for simulated practice scenarios.”On May 21, 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and $1000 “in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe.”In January 2006, Petrov traveled to the United States where he was honored in a meeting at the United Nations in New York City. In the early 1990s Russia had still managed to launch replacement satellites for its early-warning system as the previous ones died out—thereby retaining continuous coverage. Instead, the displays showed a seemingly random number of attacking missiles. For this to happen, a confirmation is necessary from several systems: ground-based radars, early warning satellites, intelligence reports, etc.”[4] But Bruce Blair has said that at that time the U.S.–Soviet relationship “had deteriorated to the point where the Soviet Union as a system—not just the Kremlin, not just Andropov, not just the KGB—but as a system, was geared to expect an attack and to retaliate very quickly to it. … The false alarm that happened on Petrov’s watch could not have come at a more dangerous, intense phase in U.S.–Soviet relations.”[12] At that time, according to Oleg D. Kalugin, a former KGB chief of foreign counterintelligence, “The danger was in the Soviet leadership thinking, ‘The Americans may attack, so we better attack first. Apparently, the Soviet Union launched a new fleet of early-warning satellites into geostationary orbit simply to provide a second angle from which to view U.S. missile fields. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.Had Petrov reported incoming American missiles, his superiors might have launched an assault against the United States, precipitating a corresponding nuclear response from the United States. The most recent example of solving the "last problem" was the Clinton administration's initiative to share early-warning data with Russia. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. Many Americans were killed, including U.S. The incident occurred at a time of severely strained relations between the On 1 September 1983, the Soviet military shot down a South Korean passenger jet, had deteriorated to the point where the Soviet Union as a system—not just the Kremlin, not just Soviet leader In an interview aired on American television, Blair said, "The Russians (Soviets) saw a U.S. government preparing for a first strike, headed by a President Shortly after midnight, the bunker's computers reported that one It was subsequently determined that the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' In explaining the factors leading to his decision, Petrov cited his belief and training that any U.S. first strike would be massive, so five missiles seemed an illogical start.Petrov underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions. Only three weeks earlier, the Soviet military had shot down a South Korean passenger jet, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, that had strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board. The incident occurred at a time of severely strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, the general public in both the United States and the Soviet Union lived in constant fear of nuclear attack. The Soviet … According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished.BBC TV Interview, BBC Moscow correspondent Allan Little, October 1998 The fourth incident was caused by an inadequate early-warning satellite system that was fooled into thinking that reflected sunlight was the flames from a handful of ICBMs. The DSP satellites were capable of detecting the launches of Soviet missiles almost anywhere on the Earth's surface.