MOSCOW--At dawn on the morning of Jan. 25, 1995, a four-stage Norwegian-U.S. joint research rocket lifted off from an island off Norway's northwest coast. The rocket was designed to study the Northern Lights, but when it rose above the horizon, it turned into another kind of experiment--a test of the hair-trigger posture that still dominates the control of Russian and United States nuclear weapons.
The rocket was spotted by Russian early-warning radars. The radar operators sent an alert to Moscow. Within minutes, President Boris Yeltsin was brought his black nuclear-command suitcase. For several tense minutes, while Yeltsin spoke with his defense minister by telephone, confusion reigned.
These may have been some of the most dangerous moments of the nuclear age. They offer a glimpse of how the high-alert nuclear-launch mechanism of the Cold War remains in place, and how it could go disastrously wrong.
Russia and the United States still rely on a doctrine that calls for making rapid-fire decisions about a possible nuclear attack. If a Russian president wants to retaliate before enemy missiles reach his soil, he has about eight minutes to decide what to do.
Some Western experts say the Norway rocket episode may not be the last. The reason is that Russia's system of early warning of a possible attack, and command and control of nuclear forces, is suffering many of the same problems plaguing the entire military. The prospect of a mistake "has become particularly dangerous since the end of the Cold War," Vladimir Belous, a retired general and leading Russian strategist, wrote recently. He added that "a fateful accident could plunge the world into the chaos of a thermonuclear catastrophe."