anorlunda said:
They have to take orders from someone. Besides, why should we think that anyone in the West, even podcast hosts or pundits, knows the internal details of how command and control works in Russia?
Ok without trying to sound condescending which is not that easy when writing these long monologues (forgive me in advance) let me try to assess this to the best of my ability.
I think there are certainly many similarities between the Russian/Soviet chain of command and the US one as it is largely based on physics and engineering solutions that make it possible.
So the Russians call their nuclear "footballs" or briefcases - Chegets , so a single briefcase is a Cheget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheget
I don't know why such a name other than it is the name of a mountain in Russia and apparently they code name some of their nuclear stuff for their mountains and ICBM's for their rivers.
Here is the mountain
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Чегет
The local ICBM bases I have been to are called Dvina and Dvina is the Russian name for the largest river in my country - Latvia, interesting... the R12 Dvina (NATO SS-4 Sandal) is the very missile that was deployed to Cuba in 1962 causing the Cuban missile crisis,
@hutchphd and others if you ever come to Europe and want to relive your childhood fears, I suggest visit a rather ok preserved Dvina missile base with silos in my neighboring Lithuania. The base is built within a national nature reserve so you can enjoy Cold war tension while breathing pure air and hiking in beautiful forest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plokštinė_missile_base
So there are 3 Chegets in use with multiple backup Chegets ready to be used in case one of the 3 Chegets in use becomes inoperable. The 3 Chegets are with
A) President of Russian federation
B) Defense minister from Ministry of defense
C) The Chief of the general staff
The last (General staff) or in it's full name "
General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" is basically a Russian analog of the "Pentagon"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Staff_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_the_Russian_FederationThen there is the system "Kavkaz" named after a famous mountain range in Russia (Caucasian mountains), which forms the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan, in the USSR times when the system was developed both countries were part of the USSR. There is not that much known about this system other than it is the physical communications link between the individual suitcases and the central command at "General staff" and further from there to the hardened underground bunkers where the folks who actually give the final command sit.
I suspect from the sources I have read that the system incorporates radiolinks as well as satellite ones to relay the code that is typed into the suitcase.
The earlier briefcases looked more like this
There have been reports the more modern versions look like this, but I can only speculate about the authenticity of such photos one thing is clear they have upgraded them overt he years.
The idea is then as follows (I believe this has to be very similar to US) early warning shows a threat, the people in the early warning stations see that and report it further to the chain of command to the higher up "bunkers" that are the datacenter overseeing the whole country's defense, these then rely this information up to the "General staff" and along side they activate the nuclear suitcases - Chegets, or the General staff activates them not sure which.
Recall the 1983 incident when Stanislav Petrov worked in one of the "data bunkers" near Moscow where they directly see what the systems show to them. He back then decided not to rely the shown threat up the chain of command as he suspected it was a false alarm. His decision resulted in that the nuclear suitcases never got activated because they activate only on the orders of a higher up command post and not directly from the guys in the first line after the early warning systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident
He decided to wait for corroborating evidence—of which none arrived—rather than immediately relaying the warning up the chain-of-command.
So to summarize how a nuclear suitcase could be used in Russia.
1) Radar, satellite etc shows a threat
2) Threat is seen by on duty officers at the data bunkers
3)Threat is relayed up the chain of command to a possible intermediary step (because I suspect there are multiple local early warning centers that then rely info up to a main command center and only from there it is relayed to the General staff headquarters in Moscow)
4) General staff activates the nuclear suitcases (all 3 of them simultaneously) via the "Kavkaz" system.
5) Based on additional info or whatever communications would happen in the background the holders of the nuclear briefcases type down their codes to "affirm" and initiate a nuclear strike.
From what I read either 2 out of 3 or all 3 of the suitcases have to be used in order for the command to strike be effective and be relayed back to the main command bunker which then would send out individual sequences to the Russian nuclear triad to order the launch.
I cannot tell with certainty but I would think that the nuclear suitcase doesn't work as a "initiator" of a strike.
I am not even sure how the strike would be ordered in case there is no threat message coming up from the bottom and the briefcases are not activated.
I think Putin and his defense minister would literally need to reach the command post and just order a strike, because the technical "switches" to order launch sequences are in the direct hands of the command bunker. Because realistically the "end guys" in the nuclear submarines and the ones sitting in missile silos can't know in advance what is happening outside, nor they have early warning themselves, so they can only accept the information coming from "command" and execute it or fail to do so.
So in a sense Putin alone can't bring end to the world, he would need to convince quite a dozen of folks in the chain of command (the ones who actually hold the keys and radiolinks to the lower/final line in the chain of command to execute launch sequences) Per law I think he does have the authority to use nuclear weapons but realistically there is a chain of people down the line that would all need to agree to that, otherwise the launch sequences would not be sent.
A few sidenotes.
In 1995 a Norwegian weather rocket that was previously agreed upon with Moscow was launched. For some reason the Russians had forgot this info, and their early warning showed a threat, unlike in 1983 when the officer who saw the threat failed to report up the chain of command this time it got reported up, and it was the only time thus far when the "Chegets" became activated.
https://nuke.fas.org/guide/russia/c3i/
on 25 January 1995 when a Norwegian sounding rocket launch activated President Yeltsin's nuclear briefcase. During this major malfunction in their early warning system, for a few minutes the Russians mistakenly thought the scientific sounding rocket was in fact a missile launched from a US submarine headed in their direction.
Radar operators issued an alert that it was an unidentified missile, with an unknown destination. The alert went to a general on duty, who received his information from the radar operator on a special notification terminal, Krokus. The duty general decided to send the alert to the highest levels.
Analogous to the US Cheyenne mountain complex The Russians are thought to have their "backup" and primary reserve bunkers for the final operation of a retaliatory nuclear strike in the Ural mountains, namely
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosvinsky_Kamen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Yamantau
But they have not confirmed that nor have any foreign delegations been allowed to see them.And finally there is the system known as "dead hand"
When a first strike has happened to the USSR/Russia and the command personnel are all dead or incapable of physically giving a "blowback" it is said to kick in.
There are contradicting opinions said about it but it seems it's not fully automatic and normally on "stand by" but gets switched on during the event of a threat. You can read it here , it's interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
Here is a good up to date review of all things nuclear, army and Russian from "Congressional research service"
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R45861.pdf
Page 25 for early warning
Operated by its Aerospace Forces, the system
consists of a network of early warning satellites that transmit to two command centers: one in the
East, in the Khabarovsk region, and one in the West, in the Kaluga region. The data are then
transmitted to a command center in the Moscow region
See also page 27 that has Putin's speech from long ago on why he is keen on modernizing Russian nuclear triad.
The document also has good summaries on most Russian current missiles as well as the "infamous" Burevestnik which they seem to still try to develop which was the missile that had to have the nuclear propulsion system. There was a thread here few years ago discussing the accident while recovering the missile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
