Able Archer 83 (nov 7, 1983 – nov 11, 1983)

Description:

Able Archer 83 was an annual military drill that NATO ran each year, what made it particularly memorable was the Soviet Union's interpretation and the years of rising tensions that preceded it. Two years prior to the incident Soviet leader Yuri Andropov announced the creation of a surveillance program called operation RYaN, an acronym that translates to “nuclear missile attack”. The program involved the activation of over 200 Soviet spies already stationed abroad. The spies were trusted to inform the Soviet Union of suspicious activity by the Americans and essentially determine the imminence of a nuclear attack and do so before troops would even be given orders to use nuclear weapons. The Able Archer drill belonged to a larger culmination of military exercises called the Autumn Forge, usually spanning a month and starting in september. The Able Archer 83 drill was a leadership and communications test, simulating only the command and staff procedures when switching from typical (training) to atypical (war) operations, thus not involving actual troops, which is exactly what operation RYaN was surveilling for. What fueled Soviet paranoia even further was the revisions to the drill from the year prior, although there was less nuclear play than in previous years the communication formats and procedures used were entirely different. Every part of the Able Archer 83 exercise raised the Soviet spies alarms, from the beginning of the drill on November 7th, it took only one or two days (according to Oleg Gordievsky, Soviet defector, who cannot recall which) of the spies reporting back to the Soviet Union for the Moscow center to send an official telegram to KGB residencies detailing the high alert the NATO forces had been set to. The Soviets were then put into a panic, placing missiles on high alert and loading nuclear warheads into planes in East Germany and Poland, all the while the Americans were blissfully unaware of the pandemonium unfolding because none of their systems picked up on it. The Soviet Union remained in this panicked state until the conclusion of the Able Archer 83 exercise, when they retracted their high alert statuses.

- Danique Weisbeek


“Nuclear Close Calls: Able Archer 83 - Nuclear Museum.” Https://Ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/, ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/nuclear-close-calls-able-archer-83/.
‌
Uenuma, Francine. “The 1983 Military Drill That Nearly Sparked Nuclear War with the Soviets.” Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Apr. 2022, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1983-military-drill-that-nearly-sparked-nuclear-war-with-the-soviets-180979980/.
‌
“National Security Archive.” National Security Archive, nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB427/docs/6.a.%20Exercise%20Able%20Archer%20SHAPE%20March%202013%20NATO.pdf.
‌
“The Able Archer 83 War Scare: “NATO Requested Initial Limited Use of Nuclear Weapons.”” UNREDACTED: The National Security Archive Blog, 21 May 2013, unredacted.com/2013/05/21/war-scare-the-real-life-war-game-that-almost-led-to-nuclear-armageddon/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2025.

Added to timeline:

Date:

Images: