1426 — Foreign Relations 19811988 Volume IV The PFIAB report also cited a January 1989 End of Tour Report Addendum by Lieutenant General Leonard H Perroots who had served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence US Air Forces Europe during the 1983 Able Archer exercise to emphasize the potential conse— quences of the intelligence gap during the Able Archer exercise Per— roots addressed Able Archer as well as Gordiyevskiy‘s reporting in that memorandum 1 U In 1983 I was assigned as the DCS for Intelligence US Air Forces Europe Ramstein AB Germany The annual NATO Command and Control exercise ABLE ARCHER was scheduled to begin during the first week of November The context of this nuclear command and control exercise was relatively benign the scenario had been purposely chosen to be non—controversial and the exercise itself was a routine annual event This exercise closely followed the bombing of air defense sites in Lebanon and directly followed the invasion of Grenada As I recall however there was no particular feeling of tension in the Euro— pean Theater beyond that which is normal 2 portion marking not declossified Only the fact that Soviet Intell— gence collection assets primarily low level signals intercept units had failed to return to garrison after their normal concentrated coverage of NATO‘s AUTUMN FORGE exercise series could be reckoned strange at all As the kickoff date of ABLE ARCHER neared it was clear that there was a great deal of Soviet interest in the forthcoming events Again this seemed nothing out of the ordinary We knew that there was a history of intensive Soviet collection against practice Emergency Action Messages EAM‘s related to nuclear release 3 portion marking not declassified ABLE ARCHER started in the morning of 3 November and progressed immediately in the scenario to NATO STATE ORANGE At 2100Z on 04 November NSA issued an electrical product report G 00 3083—83 entitled SOVIET AIR FORCES GSFG PLACED ON HEIGHTENED READINESS 2 NOVEMBER 1983 I saw this message on the morning of 5 November and discussed it with my air analysts It stated that as of 1900Z on 02 November the fighter—bomber divisions of the air force of Group Soviet Forces Germany had been placed in a status of heightened alert All Appendix 1427 divisional and regimental command posts and supporting command and control elements were to be manned around—the—clock by aug— mented teams 4 portion marking not declassified In addition to the directed com— mand and control changes the fighter—bomber divisions were also ordered to load out one squadron of aircraft in each regiment if this order applied equally across GSFG the result would have been at least 108 fighter—bombers on alert These aireraft were to be armed and placed at readiness 3 30 minute alert to destroy first—line enemy targets The alert aircraft were to be equipped with a self—protection jamming pod We knew from subsequent NSA reporting that a squad— ron at Neuruppin East Germany sought and was apparently granted permission to configure its aircraft without the ECM pod because of an unexpected weight and balance problem My air analysts opined that this message meant that at least this particular squadron was loading a munitions configuration that they had never actually loaded before i a warload 5 portion marking not declassified At this point I spoke to CinC— USAFE General Billy Minter told him we had some unusual activity in East Germany that was probably a reaction to the ongoing ABLE ARCHER He asked if I thought we should increase the real force generation I said that we would carefully watch the situation but there was insufficient evidence to justify increasing our real alert posture At this point in the exercise our forces were in a simulated posture of NATO State ORANGE and local SALTY NATION tests involving simulated generation of combat aircraft were underway at various locations including Ramstein AB If I had known then what I later found out I am uncertain what advice I would have given 6 portion marking not declassified An NSA message dated 0222207 DEC 83 provided the rest of the picture as far as we knew it—at least until the reports began to surface from the British penetration of the KGB Oleg Gordievskiy This GAMMA message was entitled SOVIET 4th AIR ARMY AT HEIGHTENED READINESS IN REACTION TO NATO EXERCISE ABLE ARCHER 2—11 NOVEMBER 1983 This report stated that the alert had been ordered by the Chief of the Soviet Air Forces Marshal Kutakhoy and that all units of the Soviet 4th Air Army were involved in the alert which included preparations for immediate use of nuclear weapons This report described activity that was contemporaneous with that reflected in East Germany but because of the specific source of this material it was not available in near realtime The two pieces taken together present a much more omi— nous picture 7 portion marking not declassified Equally ominous in its own way was the fact that this alert was never reflected at all by the I W system 1428 Foreign Relations 19811988 Volume IV At the time of this occurrence there was no distribution of electrically reported GAMMA material to the Tactical Fusion Center at Bocrfink I remedied that shortfall in the aftermath of this activity Secondly a real standdown of aircraft was secretly ordered in at least the Soviet Air Forces units facing the Central Region and that standdown was not detected The Soviet alert in response to ABLE ARCHER began after nightfall on Wednesday evening there was no flying on the following two days which led to the weekend and then the following Monday was 7 November the revolution holiday The absence of fying could always be explained although a warning condition was raised finally on about the ninth of November when overhead photography showed fully armed FLOGGER aircraft on air defense alert at a base in East Germany When this single indicator was raised the standdown had been underway for a week 8 portion marking not declassified For the next six months I was on a soapbox about ABLE ARCHER whenever I could discuss it at the appropriate classification level I spoke to the Senior Military Intelli— gence Officers‘ Conference SMIC and I buttonholed a lot of people I suggested that perhaps we should move our annual exercise away from the November 7 holiday because itis clear to me that the conjunc» tion of the two events causes a warning problem that can never be solved Our problem here was that we had a couple of very highly classified bits of intelligence evidence about a potentially disastrous situation that never actually came to fruition For decision—makers it was always difficult to believe that there could have been any serious reaction by the Soviets to such a benign exercise as ABLE ARCHER From the Soviet perspective however it might have appeared very different It was difficult for all of us to grasp that but Oleg Gordiev— skiy‘s reporting began to provide a somewhat more frightening per— spective when it became available in the Fall of 1985 9 6 By the time Gordievskiy‘s reporting began to surface for analytical review I was the Director of DIA Gordievskiy‘s initial report— ing about a war scare in 1983 immediately caught my attention It should be pointed out at the outset that Gordievskiy knew nothing of a military alert during ABLE ARCHER He did however tell us something of a chilling story about Moscow Center‘s Intelligence task» ing during 1983 He related that there was a project called either RYaN or VRYaN the latter probably being the full form of a Russian acronym meaning sudden rocket nuclear attack There was a cadre of specialists in Moscow Center charged with among other things finding the evidence of planning for a western attack on the Soviet Union Beginning in 1982 and continuing into 1983 Gordievskiy says that this group became ever more insistent that an attack was being planned by the West By March 1983 the KGB officers in Moscow Appendix 1429 had decided that ABLE ARCHER 83 would provide an excellent cover for the planned attack and KGB and GRU residencies around the world were being directed to find the evidence Gordieskiy living in London at the time states that he never believed there was really a threat and that the London residency of the KGB simply ignored the collection requirements until it began to become clear that Moscow was serious During the summer of 1983 the London residency sent some reports that in retrospect Gordievskiy believed might have hyped the war hysteria He never really believed in the threat however and reported during his debriefing in 1985 that he thought the VRYaN hysteria might have been some kind of internal political ploy I must reiterate again that Gordievskiy did not know about the secret military alert of November 1983 10 portion marking not declassified The US intelligence community has never really closed with this analytical problem A SNIE addressed this subject 1% lines not declassified The position has been taken again and again that had there been a real alert we would have detected more of it but this may be whistling through the graveyard It is not certain that we looked hard enough or broadly enough for information For Western collectors the context was peacetime without even the most basic ripples of crisis For the Soviets however the view may have looked quite different t is uncertain how close to war we came or even if that was a possibility at all but we know from Gordievskiy that the analysts in Moscow had predicted that the West would launch the attack from a posture of NATO State ORANGE What might have happened that day in November 1983 if we had begun a precautionary generation of forces rather than waiting for further information Central Intelligence Agency National Intelligence Council Job 91800551 Speeches Lectures Briefing Files 1988—1989 Box 1 Folder 2 C NIC Ermarth Chrons March 1989