Nutloose,
Ex ABLE ARCHER 83 was mostly a CPX for nuclear forces, which is what spooked the Sovs. Under Operation RYAN they'd already convinced themselves by the early 80s that the west was going to nuke them, so they then went out to find the evidence that this was going to happen. Not finding the intelligence that this was going happen simply meant that the west was hiding it well (no, don't draw comparisons with the UK/US in 2003), leading not just to an intelligence failure, but more specifically, an intelligence-led intelligence failure. Oops.
S41