Today we celebrate Petrov day in honor of Stanislav Petrov, "the man who saved the world"

 

 

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Oko ( 'Eye')Soviet missile defense early warning program consisting of satellites in Molniya and geosynchronous orbits. Oko satellites are used to identify launches of ballistic missiles by detection of their engines' exhaust plume in infrared light, and complement other early warning facilities such as Voronezh, Daryal and Dnepr radars.

 

On September 26, 1983 alarm bells went off shortly after midnight. One of the satellites signaled Moscow that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia. Given the heightened tensions between the two countries — the alarm coincided with the beginning of provocative NATO military exercises (Fleet-ex 83) and barely three weeks after the Russians shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space — Petrov could have been forgiven for believing the signal was accurate. The electronic maps flashing around him didn't do anything to ease the stress of the moment. But Petrov stated, "I had a funny feeling in my gut" that this was a false alarm. For one thing, the report indicated that only five missiles had been fired. Had the United States been launching an actual nuclear attack, he reasoned, ICBMs would be raining down on them.

 

"I didn't want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that was it." Petrov's gut feeling was due in large part to his lack of faith in the Soviet early-warning system, which he subsequently described as "raw." He reported it as a false alarm to his superiors, and hoped to hell he was right.

 

Petrov was initially praised for his cool head but later came under criticism and was, for a while, the scapegoat for the false alarm. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite.

 

In explaining the factors leading to his decision, Petrov cited his belief and training that any U.S. first strike would be massive, so five missiles seemed an illogical start. In addition, the launch detection system was new and, in his view, not yet wholly trustworthy, while ground radar had failed to pick up corroborative evidence even after several minutes of the false alarm.

 

Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB chief of foreign counterintelligence who knew Soviet leader Yuri Andropov well, said that Andropov's distrust of American leaders was profound. It was conceivable that if Petrov had declared the satellite warnings valid, such an erroneous report could have provoked the Soviet leadership into becoming bellicose. Kalugin said: "The danger was in the Soviet leadership thinking, 'The Americans may attack, so we better attack first.

 

Col Petrov sadly passed away on May 19 , 2017