Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov is a retired Russian Strategic Rocket Forces lieutenant colonel who, on September 26, 1983, prevented a nuclear attack on the United States. Computer reports into the Strategic Rocket Forces command from their satellites indicated incoming U.S. nuclear missiles. Petrov made the decision to call it a false alarm, when all indications were that it was an impending nuclear attack. The computer reports were later confirmed to have been in error. Because of military secrecy and international policy, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998.
September 26, 1983 -- Stanislav Petrov saves the world
by: cvllelaw
Wed Sep 26, 2007 at 08:00:00 AM EDT
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov is a retired Russian Strategic Rocket Forces lieutenant colonel who, on September 26, 1983, prevented a nuclear attack on the United States. Computer reports into the Strategic Rocket Forces command from their satellites indicated incoming U.S. nuclear missiles. Petrov made the decision to call it a false alarm, when all indications were that it was an impending nuclear attack. The computer reports were later confirmed to have been in error. Because of military secrecy and international policy, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998.
This incident is one of several high-risk decisions that were made by strategic nuclear forces over the years of the Cold War, often at the last minute, by administrative personnel far from the chain of command.
The incident occurred at a time of severely strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Only three weeks earlier, the Soviet military had shot down a Korean passenger jet, Korean Air flight 007, that had entered into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board. Many Americans were killed, including U.S. congressman Lawrence McDonald.
On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was working in a bunker near Moscow. His responsibilities included observing the satellite early warning network and notifying his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack against the Soviet Union. In the event of such an attack, the Soviet Union's strategy was an immediate nuclear counter-attack against the United States.
At 12:40 AM, the bunker's computers identified a US missile heading toward the Soviet Union. Petrov considered the detection a computer error, since a United States first-strike nuclear attack would hypothetically involve hundreds if not thousands of simultaneous missile launches to disable any Soviet means for a counterattack. Furthermore, the satellite system's reliability had been questioned in the past. Petrov dismissed the warning as a false alarm, though accounts of the event differ as to whether he notified his superiors or not after he concluded that the computer detections were false and that the United States had not launched any missile. Later, the computers identified five additional missiles in the air, all directed towards the Soviet Union. Petrov once again concluded that the computer system was malfunctioning, despite the fact that there was no other source of information to confirm his suspicions. The Soviet Union's land radar could not detect missiles beyond the horizon, and waiting for them to positively identify the threat would have limited the Soviet Union's response time to mere minutes.
If it had been a real attack, the Soviet Union could have been devastated by nuclear weapons without any warning or chance to retaliate. If Petrov had reported the incoming American missiles, his superiors would have launched an equally catastrophic assault against their enemies, invariably precipitating a corresponding nuclear response from the United States. Despite his dilemma, Petrov followed his intuition and declared the system's indications a false alarm. Later, it was apparent that his instincts were right, that no missiles were approaching and that the computer detection system was malfunctioning. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' orbits.
Petrov later said that he made the decision based on the facts that he had been told a U.S. strike would be all-out, that five missiles seemed an illogical start, that the launch detection system was new and not yet in his view wholly trustworthy, and that ground radars were still failing to pick up any corroborative evidence even after minutes of delay.
Despite having prevented a potential nuclear disaster by refusing to acknowledge the computer system's warnings, Lt. Col. Petrov stood accused of disobeying his orders and defying military protocol by the manner in which he handled the possible nuclear threat. He later underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions during the distressing ordeal, the result of which was that they no longer considered him a reliable military officer.
Petrov's commanders blamed him for the incident in the ensuing inquiry and held him responsible for what happened -- basically, for allowing other parts of the Soviet government to know that the missile system was not perfect. That made his superiors look bad. He was given a reprimand, officially for the improper filing of paperwork, and his once-promising Soviet military career was permanently ruined. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post, took early retirement and suffered a nervous breakdown.
The incident involving Petrov first became known publicly in the 1990s following the publication of memoirs written by Col. Gen. Yury Votintsev, the former commander of the Soviet Air Defense's Missile Defense Units. Petrov is now a pensioner, spending his retirement in relative poverty ($200/month pension). He has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day; nevertheless, on May 21, 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Colonel Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and $1,000, 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. There the Association of World Citizens presented Petrov with a second special World Citizen Award. The following day Petrov met with American journalist Walter Cronkite at his CBS office in New York City. That interview, in addition to other highlights of Petrov's trip to the United States, will be included in the documentary film The Man Who Saved the World, which is expected to be released in the summer or fall of 2008.
On the same day Petrov was honored at the United Nations in New York City, the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single individual would be incapable of starting or preventing a nuclear war, stating in part, but some Cold War analysts note that the confluence of the international tensions, the fact that Russian President Yuri Andropov was in poor health, and a long campaign of psychological operations that the Reagan administration had undertaken against the USSR, the Soviet leadership at that time seemed to be greatly concerned that the U.S. was going to launch a pre-emptive attack. Bruce Blair, an expert on Cold War nuclear strategies, now president of the World Security Institute in Washington, D.C., says 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. It was on hair-trigger alert. It was very nervous and prone to mistakes and accidents... The false alarm that happened on Petrov's watch could not have come at a more dangerous, intense phase in U.S.-Soviet relations." In a nationally televised interview, Blair said, "The Russians saw a U.S. government preparing for a first strike, headed by a President capable of ordering a first strike." Regarding the incident involving Petrov, he said, "I think that this is the closest we've come to accidental nuclear war."
Petrov has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day. In an interview for the documentary film The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World,[2] Petrov says, "All that happened didn't matter to me - it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that's all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. 'So what did you do?' she asked me. I did nothing."
SOURCE: Democratic Central
Post new comment