Dead Hand

Dead Hand (Template:Lang-ru) (known also as Perimetr, and Hand from Coffin) is purportedly a Cold War era nuclear control system used by the USSR and in use in Russia. It is an example of fail-deadly deterrence, whereby an overwhelming response is semi-automatically triggered if the USSR's leadership had been killed.

Motivation

The purpose of the "dead hand" system (as described in a book of the same name) was to maintain a second strike capability, by ensuring that the destruction of the Soviet leadership would not have prevented the Soviet military from releasing its weapons. This issue became prominent with the development of highly accurate submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) systems in the 1980s.

Prior to the 1980s, most nuclear weapons would have been delivered by long range bomber or ICBM. Earlier US SLBM systems like the 1960s vintage UGM-27 Polaris and 1970s vintage UGM-73 Poseidon missiles were considered too inaccurate for a counterforce or first strike, that is, an attack against an opponent's weapons. SLBMs were thus reserved for attacking cities, where accuracy was of less importance. In the first case, an opponent with effective radar and satellite surveillance could expect 30 minutes warning of an attack before the first detonation. This made an effective first-strike difficult, because the opponent would have time to launch on warning to reduce the risk of his forces being destroyed on the ground. The development of highly accurate SLBMs, such as the Trident C4 and later the D5 upset this balance. The Trident D5 is considered to be as accurate as any land based ICBM. Therefore, US or UK Trident submarine systems that could stealthily approach an enemy's coast and launch highly accurate warheads at close range would reduce the available warning to less than 3 minutes making a counterforce first strike or a decapitation strike viable.

Game theorists have argued that, if an enemy believed they could successfully defeat one's command and control system in a first strike, they would attempt to do so. The USSR therefore took steps to ensure that nuclear retaliation (and hence deterrence) remained possible even if its leadership was destroyed in a surprise attack. In contrast, Thompson argues that Perimeter's function was to limit acts of misjudgement by political or military leaderships in the tight decision making window between SLBM or cruise missile launches, and impact. He quotes Zheleznyakov on the purpose of Perimeter being, "to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge."

Operation

There are some differing accounts of the automatic versus semi-automatic nature of Dead Hand.

As described in 1993 issue of New York Times:

"The dead-hand system he [Dr. Blair] describes today takes this defensive trend to its logical, if chilling, conclusion. The automated system in theory would allow Moscow to respond to a Western attack even if top military commanders had been killed and the capitol incinerated.

The heart of the system is said to lie in deep underground bunkers south of Moscow and at backup locations. In a crisis, military officials would send a coded message to the bunkers, switching on the dead hand. If nearby ground-level sensors detected a nuclear attack on Moscow, and if a break was detected in communications links with top military commanders, the system would send low-frequency signals over underground antennas to special rockets.

Flying high over missile fields and other military sites, these rockets in turn would broadcast attack orders to missiles, bombers and, via radio relays, submarines at sea. Contrary to some Western beliefs, Dr. Blair says, many of Russia's nuclear-armed missiles in underground silos and on mobile launchers can be fired automatically."

However, more recent sources indicate the system was semi-automatic. In a 2007 article Blair is cited as stating that 'Dead Hand' is "designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike." . Rosenbaum, the author, states, "Of course, there's a world of difference between a "semi-automatic" doomsday device and the totally automatic—beyond human control—doomsday device."

Author David Hoffman confirms the semi-automatic nature of Dead Hand:

"And they [the Soviets] thought that they could help those leaders by creating an alternative system so that the leader could just press a button that would say: I delegate this to somebody else. I don't know if there are missiles coming or not. Somebody else decide.

And if that was the case, he [the Soviet leader] would flip on a system that would send a signal to a deep underground bunker in the shape of a globe where three duty officers sat. If there were real missiles and the Kremlin were hit and the Soviet leadership was wiped out, which is what they feared, those three guys in that deep underground bunker would have to decide whether to launch very small command rockets that would take off, fly across the huge vast territory of the Soviet Union and launch all their remaining missiles.

Now, the Soviets had once thought about creating a fully automatic system. Sort of a machine, a doomsday machine, that would launch without any human action at all. When they drew that blueprint up and looked at it, they thought, you know, this is absolutely crazy.

Current usage

It is not known whether Russia continues to use the system, and it is possible that it is still in place. Some commentators state the system never operated in fully automatic mode.

An article in Wired Magazine from September 2009 indicates that not only does Dead Hand still exist, but that it is also ready to react as intended. The article goes on to state that Dead Hand still receives system upgrades.

See also

• Fail-deadly
• Mount Yamantaw
• UVB-76, a numbers station outside of Moscow, possibly part of the system