I visited a Soviet silo near Pervomaisk in Ukraine a few years ago. The guide, who had been a subcommander in the final crew, enthusiastically demonstrated how the Soviet standard (flagpole) that stood between the two luxuriously shock-absorbed command chairs could be used to turn both keys from one station - the slotted design in the top of it allows you to simply hook on and push. It was intended as an unofficial but official but unofficial failsafe, so a sole survivor could launch.
Their design was generally very different to US missile complexes - they usually had the command complex in a silo rather than a separate bunker, as they essentially put upended submarines on shock absorbers in them then concreted over the silo cap. Clever leveraging of existing R&D, and means you're just digging silos, and no complex structure.
Also, the Satan missile is a scary, and surprisingly huge, thing.
If I remember correctly, Eric Schlosser's Command and Control recounts an incident where an American nuclear missile crew were erroneously given the order to fire a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union. The person at the other end of the phone had simply read them the incorrect code, intending to give a routine instruction related to maintenance. Launch codes were validated, and by the procedure the missile should have been launched.
Thinking that this was likely an error due to the officer's tone of voice and the present geopolitical situation, the missile crew asked him to repeat the order, and he cheerfully repeated the code for firing the missile. Only after being prompted for a third time did he realize his mistake and relayed the correct encrypted order. The near-accident was not reported at the time.
The article mentioned that the crews started their 24 hour shift with top-secret security briefing on the world situation.
Considering cases like this, it was probably quite good idea to share the information with the crew so that they could make more educated decisions instead of just blindly obeying orders.
>> Also, the Satan missile is a scary, and surprisingly huge, thing.
There were some current articles on the SATAN 2 missile which is just as scary:
The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), thought to weigh at least 100 tons, is considered to be the largest atomic weapon-carrying rocket ever produced and is capable of carrying as many as a dozen warheads inside its shell.
With an estimated range of 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles), the Sarmat missile is “capable of wiping out parts of the earth the size of Texas or France,” Zvezda said.
The report also said that the missile has been designed with stealth technology, which enables it to be fired at a target without being detected by radar systems.
> The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), thought to weigh at least 100 tons,
I don't know why presstv would write it that way, the specs of the missile have been publicly known for decades, and it weighs 209 tons. I guess that's "at least 100".
Both sides worked endlessly on producing and overcoming these and in hindsight a lot were snake-oil. I seriously doubt any ICBM could come down undetected at any time during the cold war. The US had listening/detection posts very close to Soviet territory via NATO nations. The Soviets also had listening/detection posts in Siberia, Cuba, and South America.
It's scary in that any ICBM is scary--there's nothing the Sarma can do that 2-3 Minuteman IIIs or DF-31s can't do, except maybe better missile defense evasion, and it's not like there's any missile defense available that can handle a full blown ICBM strike.
>Also, the Satan missile is a scary, and surprisingly huge, thing.
Oddly I saw a Polaris missile at RAF Duxford recently and was surprised by how small it was, in particular the warhead cowl. Or maybe the one at Duxford is a scale model or something? I know that Polaris's only had a 1500 mile range, maybe the true ICBM's need massive upscale?
The Polaris is an SLBM, and thus not exactly comparable to something like a Titan or a Satan; in particular its size is dictated largely by the physical necessity of being able to fit a worthwhile payload aboard a nuclear missile submarine. Same goes for its propellant; you don't want to be dealing with RFNA and similar nasty stuff aboard a submarine, where things are dangerous enough without adding something that's toxic, corrosive, pyrophoric, and in general just enthusiastically terrifying.
Early Soviet SLBMs actually did use nasty liquid fuels and oxidizers (hyrazine, nitrogen tetroxide) - I find the idea of being on a submarines pretty terrifying even without scary liquids and leaky reactors.
There is a fantastic book by rocket-chemist-turned-science-fiction-author John D Clark called Ignition that documents the research and discovery of liquid propellants. It's a great read - out of print, but available online as a pdf: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
I toured the museum in Tuscon in the article when I was in high school - it's still one of my favorite museum experiences of all time. I remember seeing a roll of punch tape still sitting on the targeting computer and wondering who it encoded for nuclear annihilation.
Not nice to read, but it does offer some hope for being able to convert to something like EPUB for more comfortable reading on a small device - from looking at the rendered content, I suspected it just contained page images, but if that were true, Chrome wouldn't misrender it the way your screenshot displays. Thanks!
Apparently it was made of balsa wood! What I find interesting is that the REV was not the point/be all and end all of the system, the point of the system was that all the missiles and decoys that a submarine could fire would arrive over Moscow at once and co-ordinate their behavior to overwhelm the defense systems. Pretty amazing!
I visited a Soviet silo near Pervomaisk in Ukraine a few years ago. The guide, who had been a subcommander in the final crew, enthusiastically demonstrated how the Soviet standard (flagpole) that stood between the two luxuriously shock-absorbed command chairs could be used to turn both keys from one station - the slotted design in the top of it allows you to simply hook on and push. It was intended as an unofficial but official but unofficial failsafe, so a sole survivor could launch.
Their design was generally very different to US missile complexes - they usually had the command complex in a silo rather than a separate bunker, as they essentially put upended submarines on shock absorbers in them then concreted over the silo cap. Clever leveraging of existing R&D, and means you're just digging silos, and no complex structure.
Also, the Satan missile is a scary, and surprisingly huge, thing.