The document was classified as Top Secret with the code word UMBRA, denoting the most sensitive compartment of classified material, and it cites data from sources that to this day remain highly classified. When combined with previously released CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), and Defense Department documents, this PFIAB report shows that only the illness of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov-and the instincts of one mid-level Soviet officer-may have prevented a nuclear launch.
REAL WAR GAME ARCHIVE
Bush obtained by the National Security Archive suggests that the danger was all too real.
While some studies, including an analysis some 12 years ago by historian Fritz Earth, have downplayed the actual Soviet response to Able Archer, a newly published declassified 1990 report from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) to President George H. Able Archer, according to Soviet leadership at least, must have been a cover for a genuine surprise attack planned by the US, then led by a president possibly insane enough to do it. So as Soviet leaders monitored the exercise and considered the current climate, they put one and one together. Many of these procedures and tactics were things the Soviets had never seen, and the whole exercise came after a series of feints by US and NATO forces to size up Soviet defenses and the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983. The war game, which was staged over two weeks in November of 1983, simulated the procedures that NATO would go through prior to a nuclear launch. The KGB believed that by analyzing quantitative data from intelligence on US and NATO activities relative to the Soviet Union, they could predict when a sneak attack was most likely.Īs it turned out, Exercise Able Archer '83 triggered that forecast. Named for an acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение), RYAN was an intelligence operation started in 1981 to help the intelligence agency forecast if the US and its allies were planning a nuclear strike.
REAL WAR GAME SOFTWARE
The software in question was a KGB computer model constructed as part of Operation RYAN (РЯН), details of which were obtained from Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB's London section chief who was at the same time spying for Britain's MI6.
In reality, a very different computer program run by the Soviets fed growing paranoia about the intentions of the United States, very nearly triggering a nuclear war.
REAL WAR GAME MOVIE
In the movie version of a global near-death experience, a teenage hacker messing around with an artificial intelligence program that just happened to control the American nuclear missile force unleashes chaos. Thirty-two years ago, just months after the release of the movie WarGames, the world came the closest it ever has to nuclear Armageddon. This piece first published on November 25, 2015, and it appears unchanged below. With the film now streaming on Netflix (thus setting our off day schedule), we thought we'd resurface this story for an accompanying Sunday read. one that almost pulled a WarGames, just IRL. But five years ago around this time, we were following a newly declassified government report from 1990 that outlined a KGB computer model. The Wargame Wiki is currently ranked as a silver star wiki on Encyclopedia Gamia and is part of the Eugen Systems Database Network, a network of unofficial wikis that aims to document everything about Eugen Systems' games.Update, 11/29/20: It's a very different Thanksgiving weekend here in 2020, but even if tables were smaller and travel non-existent, Ars staff is off for the holiday in order to recharge, take a mental afk break, and maybe stream a movie or five. Created on Jas the Wargame: European Escalation Wiki, the Wargame Wiki is currently maintaining over 2,594 articles along with 46,768 edits combined. The Wargame Wikia Database is an unofficial community encyclopedia project aiming to be one of the best and most comprehensive resources for Eugen Systems' Wargame franchise. The collaborative website about the Wargame trilogy of games that anyone may edit since July 2011.
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