nuclear miscalculation
What is nuclear miscalculation? Nuclear miscalculation refers to the risk that a state will mistakenly understand the intentions of another state and respond by launching a nuclear strike. The false belief that an attack is imminent causes a country to “miscalculate” the risk of full-scale war and escalate a conflict to the nuclear level. Miscalculation is more likely to occur in times of heightened tension between nations.
What makes nuclear miscalculation more likely? The less time allowed between the time a nation detects a suspected launch or act of aggression from another state and launches its own nuclear strike, the higher the risk of nuclear miscalculation. Nuclear ICBMs in the United States and Russia remain on “hair trigger alert”, a policy whereby launch procedures are started as soon as a nuclear attack is detected. Unfortunately, that process is prone to errors, faulty systems, and false alarms. The extremely short decision period mandated by the hair trigger alert policy and tension inherent to launching a nuclear strike make miscalculation more likely. Communication failures also contribute to the risk of miscalculation. Closed communication channels between major nuclear powers make it exceedingly difficult to determine the intent of a launch or even to confirm that a launch has occurred. This makes it more likely a false alarm will result in a launch.
What is Hair-Trigger Alert (or Launch on Warning)? Nuclear missiles that are kept in a state of readiness that allows them to be launched within minutes after a decision to launch are commonly said to be on “hair-trigger
alert.” The military sometimes refers to this status as “high alert,” or “launch-on-warning status." The United States
and Russia keep their land-based ICBMs on hair-trigger alert so that they can be launched within minutes of a decision to do so, in response to warning of an incoming attack based on data from radars and satellites. This policy was instituted because ICBMs in their silos are fixed targets and would be destroyed by a first strike, leading to the expression “use them or lose them”. However, the policy of launching weapons upon warning of an attack leads
to extremely rushed decision making. It would take a land-based missile about 30 minutes to fly between Russia and the United States; a submarine-based missile could strike in as little as 10 to 15 minutes after launch.
After receiving warning of an attack, political and military leaders would have only minutes to assess the credibility of the warning and decide how to respond. This time pressure increases the chance that the U.S. or Russian president would order a launch based on faulty sensor data, a computer glitch, or other erroneous information. Such problems have occurred repeatedly over the past decades and nearly led to a Soviet launch against the United States in 1983. Maintaining the ability to launch within minutes also reduces the barriers to or safeguards
against accidental and unauthorized launches - and a missile once launched cannot be recalled.
Has nuclear miscalculation happened before? While miscalculation has never resulted in a nuclear launch, it
has resulted in several extremely close calls. In 1983, Russian satellite nuclear warning systems detected the
launch of five U.S. nuclear missiles at Russia. At the time, there was no identifiable system failure. Were it not for the actions of a skeptical Lt. Colonel who independently reported the event to military leadership as a false
alarm, it’s likely that a launch would have occurred.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is another example of a situation in which a nuclear launch was narrowly averted. Russia’s placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba nearly caused the U.S. to invade the country. But unknown to the U.S.
government, there were already operational tactical nuclear weapons in the command of Russians in Cuba. If the U.S. invaded, these weapons would very likely have been used against the invaders, and the U.S. would likely have
retaliated with nuclear weapons of their own, starting a global nuclear war.