U.S., Russia Watch Skies, Side by Side

On Jan. 25, 1995, when few people had heard of the Y2K computer glitch, the United States launched a research rocket from Norway, hoping to learn about the northern lights.

But on Russian radar screens, the four-stage rocket exactly matched the profile of a Trident-launched nuclear missile, harbinger of an all-out American nuclear attack. President Boris N. Yeltsin came within eight minutes of launching a counterattack.

That brush with nuclear catastrophe has led the two countries to use the dawning of the new millennium as an opportunity to carry out their first joint nuclear operation. Since Thursday, teams of American and Russian military personnel have been sitting side by side in a $4.5-million monitoring center here, watching for any sign of missiles launched by one side against the other.

Even before the calendar turned over, they detected three Russian Scud missiles fired on the rebellious province of Chechnya. The joint operation was limited to monitoring launchings of 500 kilometers or more, however, and the Russian Scuds fell comfortably below that limit.

The American and Russian personnel here plan to keep looking for Y2K-related launchings until Jan. 15, when all possible computer-generated problems are expected to have worked their way through the two countries’ surveillance electronics.

“On the very, very off chance that a computer goes wrong” and indicates an intercontinental missile launch, “we’re offering an extra set of eyes and ears,” said Air Force Col. Donald Knight, the senior American officer for the operation’s first shift.

Experts have never worried that the millennial rollover could somehow trigger a spontaneous missile launch. Both the United States and Russia have been stating for months that their missile systems are impervious to the Y2K bug. The real danger, experts say, is that a failing early-warning instrument--a satellite component, a radar array or one of the many electronic systems that encode, transmit and interpret the data they gather--could falsely report a nuclear launch.

And since the launch sequence does not allow much time to check the quality of the data--on both sides, the decision to retaliate must be made in 6 to 10 minutes--a false alarm could have unthinkable consequences.

Still Heavily Armed and on High Alert

Even today, 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Russia continue to keep their missiles on high alert. Each country has about 3,000 nuclear weapons. Although America’s missiles have been targeted at empty ocean since the mid-1990s, training them back on Russian cities could take less than a minute.

As the 1995 episode shows, a nuclear power’s early-warning equipment does not need a millennial bug to issue false alarms. In America, a chevron of geese once tripped the missile warning systems, and in Russia, satellite-borne sensors once reported sunbeams bouncing off clouds as the contrails of five incoming missiles.

And today there is a new source of potentially permanent mischief: computer hackers. For all these reasons, officials hope that the millennial exercise will serve as a pilot project for a permanent joint early-warning center in Moscow.

“We expect that a lot of the procedures and lessons learned here will help us move right into the permanent center,” said Navy Capt. Michael W. Luginbuhl, vice director of operations for the U.S. Space Command.

Lt. Col. Jon Wicklund, the U.S. Space Command official who developed the millennial center’s operating procedures, said that talks for establishing the permanent center could begin in February or March.

For now, the joint monitoring crews, each consisting of three American officers, three Russian officers and two U.S. military translators, are receiving their early-warning data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which maintains a huge nuclear listening and command post underneath Cheyenne Mountain near here.

If there are indications of a launch anywhere, the American and Russian officers are supposed to consult with each other and share their findings with Moscow via a secure, dedicated telephone line.

“What we really are is a fusion center between Moscow and Cheyenne Mountain,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. David Hale, crew commander on the first shift. Russia was unwilling to contribute any of its electronic early-warning data to the millennial initiative, but Hale said that Russia could supply data orally over the hotline.

Also, the joint crews are testing a prototype of a secure Web site that would allow America and Russia to electronically post their scheduled rocket launches in advance.

Wicklund said that the tryout of the prototype “is kind of like putting the first version of Microsoft Windows out and letting users work with it and provide feedback.”

Although both countries see the advantages of sharing early-warning data, Wicklund said, it has been extremely difficult for them to agree on exactly what to reveal. Talks on the details broke down last spring during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombardment of Serbia, a longtime Russian ally.

For now, only seven facts are to be shared in the event of a launch: the time of liftoff, the missiles’ starting points and directions, their times and places of impact, the types of boosters and the numbers of missiles (whether single or multiple).

Some analysts believe that Russia is reluctant to reveal its early-warning data, lest American analysts learn the extent to which the Russian system has decayed since the breakup of the Soviet Union.