Perhaps most concerning is that the danger was largely unknown and overlooked, both during the exercise and throughout that precarious year, when changes in leadership and an acceleration in the nuclear arms race ratcheted up tensions between the two superpowers. Photo by Marc Deville / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images “In response to this exercise, the Soviets readied their forces, including their nuclear forces, in a way that scared NATO decision makers eventually all the way up to President Reagan,” says Nate Jones, author of Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War and a senior fellow at the National Security Archive.Īble Archer 83 was one of at least six drills included in Autumn Forge 83, a NATO military training exercise. The realism of Able Archer was ironically effective: It was designed to simulate the start of a nuclear war, and many argue that it almost did. might carry out a nuclear strike under the guise of a drill. Soviet intelligence watched the event with special interest, suspicious that the U.S. Lasting five days, it culminated in NATO resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. None of the NATO escalation was real-at least, not in the minds of the Western forces participating in the Able Archer 83 war game.Ī variation of an annual military training exercise, the scenario started with a change in Soviet leadership, heightened proxy rivalries and the Soviets’ invasion of several European countries. Concerned about a preemptive strike, Soviet forces prepared their nuclear weapons for launch.
Shortly after, command centers for the NATO military alliance exchanged a flurry of communication, and, after receiving reports that their Soviet adversaries had used chemical weapons, the United States decided to intensify readiness to DEFCON 1-the highest of the nuclear threat categories, surpassing the DEFCON 2 alert declared at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis two decades prior. In November 1983, during a particularly tense period in the Cold War, Soviet observers spotted planes carrying what appeared to be warheads taxiing out of their NATO hangars.
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