- In 1995, the world was only minutes away
from a retaliatory missile launch by Moscow, a launch that would have been
made in error, according to a television documentary.
-
- For the first time ever, President Boris
Yeltsin activated his process for a retaliatory attack against the West
when Russian early-warning stations picked up what they thought was an
approaching American Trident ballistic missile, The London Times reports.
-
- Ballistic missiles are generally used
to deliver different kinds of warheads, ranging from convention or nuclear
bombs to biological weapons.
-
- A Moscow news agency at the time announced
that Russia had shot down an incoming missile launched from northern Europe.
It turned out to be a Norwegian weather research rocket. The Russian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs had been forewarned by the Norwegian authorities six
weeks earlier, but the information was not passed on to the appropriate
military commanders.
-
- But in a reconstruction of the incident,
including interviews with key Russian military officials, Britain's Channel
4 Equinox program has discovered how close the world was to a ballistic
missile launch by Moscow, the Times reports.
-
- After the approaching missile was spotted,
Moscow began a ten-minute countdown in the belief that an American Trident
submarine in the Norwegian Sea or Barents Sea had launched a missile.
-
- At six minutes to impact, the Russians
switched on a special communications circuit which connected military headquarters
with silo-based missiles, and missile-carrying trains and submarines. At
five minutes to impact, Yeltsin would have had to make a decision about
transmitting "unblocking codes" to make a launch possible.
-
- Colonel Robert Bykov, a former commander
of a mobile missile regiment, part of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces,
reveals in the program that orders were given to Russian ballistic missile
submarines to go on battle stations.
-
- Bruce Blair, a former American nuclear
forces commander, says: "The military actually issued orders to the
Strategic Rocket Forces to prepare to receive the next command, which would
have been the launch order."
-
- The launch of the Norwegian Black Brent
XXII rocket ended "successfully" when it crashed into the Arctic
ocean more than 600 miles from Russian territory. It was part of a joint
Norwegian-American project investigating the Northern Lights.
-
- Moscow abandoned the countdown when it
realized the missile's trajectory was not on its territory.
|
Sightings HomePage