| Oh, Perimetr. That was one of the Soviet Unions's better ideas. The goal was that the Premier of the USSR was not allowed to have the authority to order a nuclear first strike. Only the Politburo could do that. This was post-Stalin, and the leadership didn't want one person to have too much power. The USSR earlier had a dual-custody system - the military controlled the delivery systems, but the KGB controlled the warheads. They had to cooperate. Again, no single person could start a nuclear war. This is very Soviet. Padlocks that require two different keys are a popular USSR antique. The Premier could activate Perimetr in a crisis. But that didn't do much. Only if Moscow were destroyed, for which there are sensors, and the system could not communicate with the underground bunkers of either the leadership or the General Staff, would the system activate. Several locations could stop the process. Even if triggered by the destruction of Moscow and the silence of higher authority, Perimetr just released the codes that allowed regional commanders to use nuclear weapons at their discretion. It didn't launch an attack automatically, although some articles claim it did. This is much more restrictive than the US system. The US president has the authority and the codes to launch a nuclear first strike. This was a very real concern in the last days of the Trump administration, enough that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Speaker of the House met to discuss what to do if attack orders were issued. |