https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...veal-8tpkt9t8d
Soviet Union was ready to scramble 100 nuclear bombers in 1983, files reveal
The Soviet Union armed 100 aircraft with nuclear bombs and put them on a 30-minute alert status as Cold War tensions threatened to boil over in the early 1980s, declassified US intelligence files disclose.
The documents add another layer to the story of how close the world came to catastrophe in 1983 when harsh rhetoric set both sides on edge. The world was on the brink after Soviet forces shot down a Korean Air Lines jet west of Sakhalin island and Nato held war games to test its ability in a nuclear war.
The report, released by the US state department, claims that Lieutenant General Leonard Perroots, the top US intelligence official in Europe, discovered that Soviet air force units had been secretly armed and put on full alert to launch nuclear strikes as Nato prepared to play out its Able Archer exercise on November 7, 1983.
Soviet fighter-bomber regiments in East Germany and Poland, equipped with about 100 Mikoyan MiG-27s, Sukhoi Su-17s and Su-24s, were seen being armed with nuclear bombs. The air crews were briefed “to destroy first-line enemy targets”. All routine missions were cancelled in preparation.
Previously declassified intelligence reports in 2015 disclosed that the Soviet Union had become worried about the Able Archer exercise, which rehearsed a simulated nuclear attack on Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces. The high-level exercise even involved Margaret Thatcher and
Helmut Kohl,
the West German chancellor. The Soviet Union at the time was so worried about the West launching a pre-emptive strike that Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief, ordered that all Soviet intelligence officers stationed overseas had to report any signs of war preparations, even down to whether the lights were on in London at government offices late into the night.
The British government alerted America to the Soviet fears after receiving detailed intelligence reports from
Oleg Gordievsky, the senior KGB official at the Soviet embassy in London who was serving as a double agent for MI6.
It was an era of high tension. By the 1980s the Soviet economy had stagnated and its soldiers were bogged down in Afghanistan. President Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, leading to a power battle in the Kremlin that was only resolved with the selection of President Gorbachev in 1984.
In the US President Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and announced plans for a Star Wars anti-missile defence system while preparing to base Pershing II and cruise missiles in western Europe. In September 1983 the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan, killing all 269 passengers and crew on board.
The new documents show that Perroots, who went on to become director of US defence intelligence, initially advised his superiors against “increasing our real alert posture” because the picture was uncertain. Only after Able Archer was over did he realise that the Soviet Union had prepared “for immediate use of nuclear weapons”.
His later assessment of the scare appears in his “end of tour” report in 1989 on his retirement. He expressed his disquiet over what he felt was “inadequate treatment of the Soviet war scare”.
He said that a lack of intelligence of Soviet intentions and apprehensions during Able Archer could have led to “a potentially disastrous situation”. He later admitted: “If I had known then what I later found out I am uncertain what advice I would have given.”
Fortunately, a few days after Able Archer was completed, the Soviet air force returned to “normal alert status”.