Reagan being Reagan, which is neither a saint nor a devil, the idea that he would have been insane enough to launch 5 ICBMs at Siberia for funzies is so patently insane that only a pretty severe mistake in recollection is going to explain that.
let's up this a bit . The Colonel of course already knew the trajectory was up and down for an empty part of Siberia , his not-reporting-the incident stuff is also quite out of line since he immediately alarmed the Alert ICBM for such incidents . ı hear in 1970 this was a single 1 megaton warhead aimed at Frenchman's Flats or something in Nevada , an isolated location where the US used to conduct nuclear tests in the 1950s . Had anything impacted , the response would have been entirely legal . And of course it's quite feasible with sunlight reflecting from a satellite and this suddenly appearing to be an ICBM launch ; but 4 extras ? This is some yeah , right moment . Obviously people in the US wouldn't want the signal lost in some feeling of "Gotta be a mistale."
what follows would be increasingly off topic as the reader continues reading . The 1 megaton in 1970 thing is straight from Lord Vader : Nixon was in China and in the spirit of the new found frienship was offering to lend an hand to save the Chinese honour . There had been some border clashes with the Soviets ; America had acquired some MiGs through clandestine means . Bingo ... A proposal to mount a CAP by those superb American pilots in planes with Chinese markings to teach a lesson to them Russkies with all bragging left to Beijing . The Chinese informed the Russians with an addition -there wouldn't be any issues if none of those "Chinese" planes returned to Manchuria ... They were out for swindling the US , not for fighting America's war or anything . Though the situation demanded the Chinese not to voice the thing and it was the Russians who took it "West" ... A request on Vader to pass the thing that French-something was "close" to Nellis , the USAF Airbase , or that CIA installation where those American MiGs were kept .
going even more off-topic there were repercussions of '83 , the year which was once before 1984 -the 70th anniversary of WW1 hence before '87 when the Red Menace was to complete its existance and go to hell . One was that a cheesy B-Movie got word of the mouth support and nary a "negative" review in due course ; am advised to say nothin' against the hairdo of the 1980s , as if ı wasn't there and it didn't look so natural at the time - ı do like Terminator in any case ... You know , people had to be against such glorious ideas , like lobbing stuff around . Else other "third parties" might arise -like the unstoppable hordes of China riding horses with gas masks .
from
www.dakkadakka.com . Things you find on the web ...
stupid ? Why , ı am stupid . Was good for James Cameron until he crossed the Neo-cons with the Avatar ; (after the theft of the Oscars to get Hollywood crying "Uncle") that seems to be the only outcome of the post 9/11 meeting where White House met the directors : There had to be no questioning of Dabya in any sense , right ? Cameron got it from the ex- with the Hurt Locker ...
back to the 80s again . With the realization that they had come this close to getting rid of the entire human race , Moscow and Washington decided to make friends for a while . As a confidence increasing measure even those clandestine MiGs in Nevada were to be a tool . Duly a Russian delegation arrived in the US and American officers were "ordered" , really ordered to be polite to them . Robert Gates in his latest book claims the American Military is not ordered , being the vanguard of Freedom and Liberty and whatever . Anyhow as some book has it :
[An American officer's] sense of humor sometimes got him into trouble with his commanders, particularly when it was for the benefit of the Russian satellites. Tonopah was a magnet for satellite interest as it was ... " ... put a T-38 nose out of the front of a hangar, and an F-5’s tail out of the back, so that from the air it looked like we had an airplane about 108ft long. In the end, it actually attracted more satellite attention...”
... “We knew that they [the Soviets] knew [about the MiGs], but we knew that they didn’t know how many, how often we flew them, or to what degree we were using them – they had no idea how many pilots we were training against them.” He added: “At around that time, some Soviet general officers and other dignitaries came to Nellis on a ‘be good to each other’ tour. Myself, the squadron commander, and some Aggressors were having dinner with them and everyone was being cordial.
Then, one of these Soviet Air Force generals interrupted one of our generals mid-speech: ‘So, General, how many MiGs do you have at Tonopah?’ Without batting an eye, he turned around and said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe 300, or 350?’ and then went back to his conversation. It didn’t phase him a bit. The Russian guy almost passed out.”
gates probably didn't hear about that failure to follow commands ... And doubtful that the Russian almost passed out . Here they were playing the American script and getting snubbed unscripted . He simply shut up and didn't come up with the planned "answer" that back in Russia they loved the Phantom very much , with at least two in operation ... Or a drunkard's whisper that they had put this '60s American helmet sight system VTAS or something back onto theirs ... To be followed that with some revelation the VTAS wasn't much of a help against the helmet sights in the MiG-29 ... To be discussed and decided upon -for a "mutual" benefit for both sides .
back then Russia's problem was the F-4 , still capable at the time and available in abundant numbers . The coming Flankers and Fulcrums , while super , were also real expensive . Considering the impressive numerical lead America had with the Teen series of fighters , a modernized F-4 wasn't something the Soviets desired . This balance of forces thing drive lots of budgets all around the world ... And America's problem was the F-4 , because of Lavi -an Israeli plane then in development . Started as an A-4 replacement and "sold" to US , considering the hold Tel Aviv has on Washington . Yet it had "some" creep to challenge the F-16 in sales ... America was supposed to fund a competitor to a prime export of its own industry and develop that competitor as well . Say , the engine for Lavi ? P&W 1120 , something originally done to replace the existing F-4 powerplant . So a modernized Phantom would eat funds USAF could better use on the ATF -badly needed to defeat the Flankers and the Fulcrums- make F-16 more expensive considering there would be less exports to drive unit costs down and increase the risk to American aircrews in a shooting war even with a third tier country , considering there was nothing to make the Phantom less visible Stealth-wise ... Kinda luckily for originators of the idea who spent months haggling about the details of who would say what , only to see it blown apart since no USAF General could miss a chance to "humiliate" the Russkies , a primary tenet of the American "Fundamentalism" is the conversion of the Jews at gunpoint at the end of the world . Which would be easier if Jews didn't have so many guns of their own and used all of them on killing as many Ayrabs as possible ... America finally shut the Lavi down and the Phantom soldiers on - true to the original .
and the Wikipedia presents it as if it is 100% Russian fault that the world nearly ended this time or that time , while the West was like some paragon of virtue ... Quoting a defector or something says the page on Colonel Petrov : [ If he] had declared the satellite warnings valid, such an erroneous report could have provoked the Soviet leadership into becoming bellicose. Kalugin says, "The danger was in the Soviet leadership thinking..." As if lobbing stuff over the fence is not bellicose in itself . Almost as good as the Politruk who saved the world with arguing his submarine commander that he shouldn't like start the WW III in '62 with firing a nuclear torpedo at an USN Task Force which has been depth charging that Soviet Sub for something like 13 hours straight . Almost . Sometime around 2010 some Turkish idiot got into some Cessna and crossed the American-Canadian border . USAF jets scrambled , all the public buildings evacuated in some State Capital ... Made great sense , if the Turkish Military did not take the kangoroo courts manly on the chin , some link between El Kaide and Turks be established and we all be seeing how bellicose Uncle Sam be ... Hubris is incredible ; once one starts looking at it .
even the celebrated Cuban Missile Crisis was no biggie for Washington . The primary concern for the White House ? Measures to see Italians and we don't try to take over Jupiter warheads after
we get bombed by the Russians . Italians being away from the action get a pat on the back and some "Guido, it's not worth it and it will soon pass." ; we get live bullets as per instructions from the White House . Russians overflying Turkish territory just like they have always done after each U-2 penetration , the Turkish Airforce in full alert and Americans declare nothing to worry : "It's some flock of birds." which funnily enough was the same thing back in 1956 , as it seems .