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Windows — 1997

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Description of Nuclear Strike

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Nuclear Strike is the last and most fun entry in Electronic Arts’ underrated «Strike» series of helicopter action games.

In this release, your job is to fight terrorists in different parts of the globe. While you still fly a trusty helicopter from the previous two games, some missions require the use of other vehicles such as hovercrafts. This time you can also equip your helicopter with different weapons — no more hunting for ammo crates all the time 🙂 This is also the first and last «Strike» game with 3D-accelerated graphics and cutscenes.

Games Domain’s review says it all about the good points: «[In] Nuclear Strike, the latest game in Electronic Arts’ «Strike» series, a particularly unstable bloke by the name of LeMonde does manage to get his hands on a nuke, intending to share its destructive power with the rest of the world — someone has to stop him. And playing a member of Strike, a covert organisation set up to deal with such threats, you get the privilege of taking his toy away from him and saving the world — again.

Unsurprisingly, negotiation is out of the question so, piloting one of several well-armed craft, you have to fly off to Southern Asia where he was last seen, and track down the nuke, blowing up vehicles, bases, national monuments and generally causing as much havoc as you can. But don’t worry if you’ve never touched a helicopter or a tank in your life — Nuclear Strike isn’t a simulation. It’s more of a raging missile-lobbing chain-gun firing tank-smashing rocket-dodging blast fest, with just a little bit of strategy thrown in.

Sounds fun? It is. There are a total of five levels to be conquered, and one secret level — though it isn’t just a case of blasting your way from one end of the level to the other. You have to complete a number of mini-missions on each level, which include rescuing prisoners, intercepting enemy convoys, protecting rebels and other such tasks — all of which have to be completed in a specific order. The general aim of all these missions is to find out just where LeMonde has stashed the nuke. And he’s not going to let you just fly in and take it either — each level is filled with an assortment of hi-tech weaponry ranging from soldiers with missile launchers all the way through to tanks, Apache helicopters and even anti-satellite missiles. You’re not entirely on your own though — you’re sometimes aided by willing co-conspirators such as Cash, the British mercenary.

Plot developments and pre-mission briefing are relayed though the Strike TV network — in other words, you get a selection of full motion video clips telling you where to go and what to do. The quality of acting in the FMV clips is pretty good, and the clips are strangely MTVish. The in-game action itself is viewed from a kind of isometric angle, your chopper maintaining roughly the same position on the screen while the camera spins around to give you the best view of the action.

The graphics are pretty good, with undulating water, impressive explosions, and lots of other fancy effects. And if you’ve got a 3DFX card, things look even better — if you’re 3D-card less you may end up having to run the game in bog standard VGA mode — although it still looks decent enough. Nuclear Strike is great fun to play, and extremely challenging. The differing objectives require you to constantly re-evaluate your tactics and there’s never a dull moment.

Until you finish the game that is, because unfortunately, Nuclear Strike only has five levels (and one secret level) to play. Compare this to the likes of other games such as Swiv 3D and the earlier Jungle Strike which had ten missions, and you begin to wonder just where all the other missions went. But Nuclear Strike is great while it lasts — and as long as you don’t expect it to keep you going forever, you’ll have a blast.»

Review By HOTUD

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a game by	Electronic Arts, and EA Games
Genre:	Action
Platforms:	PC, Playstation, PSX
Editor Rating:	7.8/10, based on 9 reviews
User Rating:	8.3/10 — 7 votes
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See also:	Shoot-Them-Up, Beat ’em-Up

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Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10

System requirements:

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• Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP

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Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10

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Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10

System requirements:

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• Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP

Game Reviews

The first 32-Bit Strike title. Soviet Strike, was a relatively disappointing game. It clearly suffered technically from Electronic Arts’ growing pains as they tried to adapt to developing 32-Bit games. From playing Nuclear Strike, it’s apparent that many lessons have been learned as the early preview version of this game is already more impressive than its predecessor.

As is implied by the title. Nuclear Strike revolves around a series of missions geared toward stopping a madman from unleashing a nuclear weapon. The story is well interwoven within the game through a series of quick, well-produced video clips between and during missions. In case anyone really cares, many of the same characters from the previous Strike game will return to the sequel, giving the series a sense of continuity.

One of the major flaws of Soviet Strike (according to EA) was that the missions were a little too hard and drawn out. As a result, Nuclear Strike has been designed with an eye for ease of use. The missions are better defined, more supplies are available and the map and mission interface is more intuitive. The Heads-Up Display (HUD) is also improved, making it easier to locate enemies, objectives and other key locations in the impressively large terrain maps.

Although the game has been made a bit more manageable. Nuclear Strike promises to have increased depth. Thirteen different vehicles are available On addition to the stock Apache including a tank, a hovercraft, a Harrier jet, the A-10 Warthog. the Huey (chopper) and even a news helicopter (we know how important those can be in a war). Some missions will be very complex, involving friendly ground forces and support missions. With so many different combat vehicles and aircraft in the game, the variety of tasks is enormous.

Technically. Nuclear Strike should be a treat for action game fans. The graphics have been improved substantially since the previous Strike game. The terrain now scrolls smoothly (it used to be jerky at times), and the frame rate is much brisker. The explosions are much more spectacular-unfortunate vehicles and buildings are engulfed in flames, which then dissipate to reveal a crater as a sloppy reminder of your handiwork.

With all of the improvements being made to Nuclear Strike, it looks like this (keep your fingers crossed) will be the game that really makes this series of military action titles shine.

This year’s addition to EA’s «Strike» line of games puts you once again in control of a helicopter with the fate of a planet riding on its successful completion of the mission. The graphics of their latest heli-title Nuclear Strike are really sharp and hold up the reputation built by Soviet Strike. We are expecting the same amount of in-mission fun as in Soviet Strike such as the sporadic rescue of POWs and the insertion of trained troops to take over tanks and complete their part of the mission which in turn reflects what happens in your mission. You can expect to save the planet once again later this year.

It’s a rumble in the jungle with Nuclear Strike, EA’s latest military action blastfest and the sequel to Soviet Strike.

Really Great Balls of Fire

In addition to improving the game’s artificial intelligence and animation frame rate, EA promises to enhance what is arguably the Strike series’ most important element: the explosions! Now leave a crater, not just a black stain. The missions themselves are more dynamic—you’ll be commanding some of j your forces omthe fly, and the action takes place in real time. Ad-rvance planning and quick thinking are now more important than e ever for success.

With tougher missions come better tools at your disposal. A new heads-up display with a compass helps navigation, and a new short-range radar gives you advance warning of sneak attacks from behind.

By Land, Sea, and Air

Nuclear Strike’s action takes place in Southeast Asia, where a madman has stolen a nuclear weapon and threatens to use it—unless you, as a member of the elite Strike corps, can stop him. No longer limited to airborne-only action, players now have a choice of 10 vehicles at their command, including a tank, a hovercraft, a Harrier Jumpjet, an A-10 «tank killer,» a news helicopter, and a classic Vietnam-era Huey chopper. Look for new photorealistic terrain, too.

Overview

Here we go again. For all of the fans of the Strike series, it is time to jump into your chopper and save the world. I know you are probably thinking that you have saved the world enough times in the first games of the series, but now you can save the world using 15 different vehicles. You are no longer limited to just a chopper.

Nuclear Strike looks to add to the successful series by changing some of the more familiar aspects of the game and giving you control of more than just your vehicle. They added a mini map and a waypoint indicator for those of us who needed help, but still made a pretty cool game to go with the pretty cool features.

Gameplay

I will be the first to admit that I am not very good at flight/combat sims. I don’t know why, but I just have a difficult time with all of the complex controls and everything. I like these games, but I just suck at them. Everybody has their weak spots and this type of game is my gaming weak spot. Surprisingly, Nuclear Strike is easy enough to play that even I was blasting tanks into oblivion with minimal effort.

Nuclear Strike is mostly an air-to-ground combat type game. You will get to do some ground-to-ground combat, but for the most part you will be flying above the action in some sort of aircraft. You have different campaigns that are made up of multiple missions inside the campaign. So in order to complete a campaign, you must finish all of the missions as directed. No problem.

Your missions are relayed through FMV cut scenes. These cut scenes are flashing, jumping, flickering and changing faster than you can blink an eye. Most of them have the camera jumping from your intelligence officer to other people. Although this was fairly effective in conveying the mission, it did get annoying after a while. Luckily, you could skip over the FMV scenes and read a written explanation of the mission so you did not have to watch them. The missions usually were made up of destroying a particular target, rescuing pilots or providing air cover for a ground operative. The variety kept the missions fun and exciting.

A big part of the game is picking objects up. EA deserves a big pat on the back for the system they used for picking up objects. Instead of making a complicated button sequence or something, all you had to do was fly over the object and a grappling hook would extend and pick up the object. It was a bit touchy in that you had to maneuver your craft in just the right position in order to get the object, but it was still a great idea and an important part of the game. You will constantly be using this, because you can pick up armor, weapons and fuel, not to mention people and other objects. It was great to just have to worry about finding the objects instead of picking them up.

The action in this game is quite intense, depending on the scenario. You will fight defenses ranging from people-borne surface-to-air rockets to giant multi-missile turrets. There is definitely no shortage of enemies, and you will constantly have one eye looking at the mini map and the other looking at the game. The mini map used a color coded scheme to help you identify objects. For me, this was essential since I use the shoot-first-ask-questions-later method. The color codes help me identify good guys versus bad guys.

One thing that made this game so easy for me to play was the weapons and targeting system. It was so basic that even I could get it right. You used one button for your machine guns, another for missiles and another for rockets. The best part was that it really did not matter which button you hit, because you would do damage regardless. This was great for me because, when in a panic situation, I would just start pushing buttons and unless I was out of that particular weapon, I would launch something good. All I have to say is the simpler the better.

The last thing worth mentioning is the enemy AI. It was sometimes good, other times not good. For example, I picked up a load of hostages. I had to find a landing pad to drop them off to safety. Well, I found a pad and just to the immediate west of the landing pad, the mini map showed a ton of enemies just waiting. Since I came in from the East, I landed without any resistance. It was not until I took off and flew over the first tank that they noticed I was there. We are talking 15 feet from the landing pad. Come on, they should have heard me coming and attacked me, forcing me to kill them before unloading the passengers. This may be trivial, but it would have helped the realism.

Graphics

This is another shining point for Nuclear Strike. The graphics are pretty darn good. You feel like you are flying through the jungle or over the sea or whatever terrain you are covering. The FMV sequences, as annoying as they are, are high quality. The best part of the whole game, though, is when you shoot a person standing on the ground and watch them try and dive to safety after being shot. For some reason, the bodies would just disappear after making their dive. It would have been helpful to have the dead bodies remain to help you determine if you had already visited the area.

Bottom Line

ally sucks at this type of game, Nuclear Strike is a fun title. After getting used to everything, I was unstoppable (maybe I should have not been playing on easy). The graphics, controls and easy execution should offer casual flight sim/combat gamers some hours of fun. It is nice to see that someone has made this type of game with complex features and stories with easy execution.

Storyline/Overview

Welcome to Strike-net, a government-sponsored, unregulated special ops unit comprised of elite specialists. Your mission: stop all those ruthless terrorists, dictators, and crime lords from taking over the world. If you fail, it’s nuke city, baby! You play the role of commander and pilot of the Super Apache, the world’s latest advanced combat helicopter, and are constantly supplied throughout the game with information from your fellow Strike team members. General Earle, your commanding officer, assigns your missions, Hack is a computer genius who will periodically interrupt a mission to inform you of some important mission data, and Andrea, a spy by night and an international news correspondent by day, will keep you updated on the conditions of the battle.

It doesn’t take long to get up and running and before you know it, you’ll be piloting your Super Apache, along with a wide choice of other vehicles, through a very «explosive» arcade game where just about anything you shoot erupts into a huge fireball of flames, splinters, and shrapnel. At various points in the game you can fly an AV-8B Sea Harrier and an A-10X Warthog, just to name a few of the aircraft available. On the ground, you can control tanks and hovercraft. In all, there are as many as 15 vehicles throughout the game, which should keep your interest for a long time.

Gameplay and Controls

Your campaigns take place in southeast Asia beginning in «a simmering jungle kingdom somewhere along the river delta.» Your mission is to stop an ex-CIA, ex-KGB bad guy who has stolen a tactical nuclear device. Your mission is explained to you through the use of various Full Motion Video (FMV) cut-scenes. All the FMV scenes are of high quality and Electronic Arts used a full production team to film them, which clearly shows.

The controls are very simple and straightforward. A four button joystick is practically a necessity because of the fact that you have 4 different weapons to fire. You have a color-coded directional compass to help steer you towards supplies and mission objectives. As you fight it out on the battlefield, you will burn fuel, take damage, and diminish your weapons supply. When this happens, you can fly to various locations to winch aboard fuel pods, more ammo, and extra armor. Various readouts on your screen keep track of the status of each.

But still the biggest advantage of Nuclear Strike over the other Strike games is the ability to change vehicles. In the first mission, you can transfer your pilot to control a hovercraft that can traverse though land or water disintegrating practically everything this heavy craft comes in contact with. In later campaigns you can transfer to other helicopters, an A-10X (The «X» indicates this is a prototype of a Vertical Take Off and Landing VTOL aircraft). Basically, it hovers! You will also have the option to transfer your pilot to an M1A1 Abrams Battle tank which gives the game a whole new flavor. The tanks are slow, however one easy shot is all it takes to waste the largest of the enemy tanks. Some of the other vehicles include an AV-8B Sea Harrier, M2 Bradley armored personnel carrier, RAH-66 Super Comanche, and even a news chopper. You are also able to give commands to other units on the battlefield in certain situations. For example, you can fly over a group of M1A1 tanks and give them orders to attack a target, guard a road, or just hold their location until you are ready to give them an assignment. Orders can be given to other choppers, infantry, and anti-tank units. Some missions require you to get these units engaged in the battle in order for you to have a chance of a successful mission.

The game consists of five campaigns with up to 10 missions each, with the decided drawback that you can only save your game once you have completed the campaign. Frequently, I would by playing for 40-50 minutes and get killed off just before the end of the campaign and would then have to go back to the beginning and start over. I agree that the player shouldn’t be able to save the game after each mission, but it would be nice to be able to save the game halfway through the campaign.

Graphics

Nuclear Strike’s graphics are average at best for gamers that do not have a 3Dfx card. However, if you do enjoy the visual benefits of the card such as I, prepare to be dazzled. Let me first tell you about the explosions. They come in many shapes and sizes, and are such in this game as to be the outright best I have ever seen grace my monitor. Blow up a building and watch it burst into flames with wood splinters flying out in all directions causing little mini explosions when they hit the ground or ripples if they splash into the water. Many times enemy tanks will be blasted up into the sky only to fall back to earth a few moments later. I could criticize the fact that just about everything blows up including palm trees, telephone poles, wood and chain link fences, but it is just so beautiful, I can never get enough. There are many times I will fly around and blow things up while ignoring the mission orders just to relieve myself of the stress of everyday life.

As far as terrain, Nuclear Strike features photo-realistic landscapes and highly-detailed ships, tanks, and buildings with the 3Dfx card. I tested the game on a friend’s P-200 with a Matrox Mystic 3D card and I had to turn down the graphics resolution in order to get the game to run smoothly. However, even at the same graphic resolution, there was no comparison to the quality of the visuals. On my 200MMX with 3dfx, I could run at 640×480 very smoothly with no problems. There is no question this game was designed for use with the 3Dfx accelerator in mind, and suffers considerably without it.

Audio

To complement the amazing visual explosions, Nuclear Strike also contains some pretty good audio. The first thing you’ll notice is the thump-thump-thump of your helicopter blades. With a little bass adjustment, you can make it even more convincing. The explosions, guns, and missiles are all nicely done, and you can adjust the music and sound effects levels. However, it would also be nice to be able to adjust the volumes of particular sounds, i.e. intelligence reports and low fuel alarms. I needed something that would wake me up out of my «Jeez, I love those explosions» hypnotic state, or before I knew it, my Apache’s engine would start coughing and shuddering, thirsting for fuel.

System Requirements

Nuclear Strike requires Windows 95, P-133 or faster without a 3Dfx card or a P-90 or faster with a 3Dfx card. 16 MB RAM, 2 MB video RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, and a lofty 110 MB of hard drive space. EA recommends a P-166 processor or faster, 32 MB RAM, 8X CD-ROM drive and 216 MB of hard drive storage. Even with 216 MB on the hard drive, the game still requires the Nuclear Strike CD during play.

Bottom Line

There are games that I will buy and play for a month or two and never play again, and there are games that I will come back to play again and again over the years. I believe Nuclear Strike will fall under the latter category. It is very simple, yet fun, with great graphic and sound qualities. There is no doubt in my mind that Nuclear Strike was designed and meant to be played in conjunction with a 3Dfx graphic accelerator. If you have the 3Dfx, put this game on your Christmas list. If you don’t, put the 3Dfx on your Christmas list first, because more and more games are requiring this chipset to look the way they do in the box shots, and this is definitely one of them.

Nuclear Strike is bigger, badder, and better-looking this year. You can trade in your Apache gunship for a ride in 13 other vehicles, too.

It’s Da Bomb!

A rogue agent has stolen a nuclear device from Russia, and now he’s touring Asia to find just the right place to start World War III. Once again, the super-secret Strike team is called upon to save the world without drawing too much attention. Nuke’s mission-based gameplay will be familiar to Strike heli-combat vets. This time, however, you also pilot 13 new aircraft and vehicles in addition to your Super Apache chopper, including a hovercraft, a tank, a Harrier jumpjet, a Huey gunship, and an A-10 Avenger. The action goes down in five levels spread throughout Asia, from Indochina to the Korean demilitarized zone, with eight to ten missions per level.

Explosive Graphics

Nuclear Strike looks much like its squadron predecessor, Soviet Strike, but there are some.. .err, striking improvements. Unlike Soviet Strike, Nuclear’s terrain is composed of 3D objects, so if you fly around them in a circle they look almost photorealistic. EA also claims Nuke’s frame rate is 25 percent faster than Soviet’s, and, in fact, the preview version felt noticeably quick and smooth as silk. The story cinemas and Strike.net tactical screens are awesome.

Striking Gameplay

The gameplay even in the preview version is great, and the heads-up display sports a new waypoint indicator that makes it way easier to navigate across the deadly terrain. Enemy forces will react to your specific attack strategies; however, you’ll also be able to command friendly forces (a la real-time strategy games like Command & Conquer) to help you achieve your mission objectives. While it’s too early to make the call on whether Nuclear’s as nail-bitingly hard as Soviet, EA’s aiming for a broader audience with more evenly balanced difficulty.

The second 32-bit Strike title takes place in Asia as the Strike team heads out for another series of deadly missions. This time the world is being held hostage by a group of terrorists with a nuclear bomb. Colleagues General Earle, Hack, and Andrea Grey return to deal out the damage, along with new characters to be introduced. Nuclear Strike features five missions and will use a play scheme similar to that of the 16-bit Jungle Strike—you’ll be able to pilot several other vehicles during the missions, including different helicopters, a Harrier jump jet, and assorted ground vehicles. Looks like EA can’t miss with this Strike.

In round two of the next-generation Strikes, the Strike team is headed deep into the jungles of China to hunt down a bloodthirsty modern-day pirate. His cargo is as hot as his temper—a nuclear warhead that will fetch a mighty price on the black market. With the aid of recon agents, a feisty female jungle warrior, and even a mercenary cleverly named Cold Harding Cash, you’ll fly soirees, blast villages, destroy rockets on the launch pad, and wreak more merry hell in this masterful reworking of the Strike games. You’ll also be able to pilot a few other vehicles, like a hovercraft, an Ml Abrams tank, and even a Harrier jet.

Expert Strikers, however, may find the game is simply more of the same. Even with the enhancements, the game plays exactly like the previous Strikes, where missions are piled on top of each other, and managing your ammo, armor, and fuel resources is essential to the mission’s completion.

Strike fans will definitely lust for the chopper heroics of this, the newest and best of the Strike games. But newcomers may find the action too involved, while Command & Conquer cadets may find the blast-and-fly-past strategy too simple. Go Nuclear if your heart can take another Strike.

Graphics

Smooth, polished landscapes and polygon-rich explosions snazz up the graphics, but the backgrounds aren’t interactive and actually look fake (especially the frozen whitecap swells in the ocean).

Sound

The sound is a definite plus with real voices, lively commentary, and ear-splitting explosions. Even the thwack-thwack-thwack of the chopper’s blades is crystal clear.

Control

The same problems from earlier Strike games are back, including imprecise targeting and chopper physics that don’t match the arcade feel of the action. However, several new navigational aids keep you on track.

Fun Factor

Although the best in the Strike series, Nuclear Strike doesn’t deliver enough original gameplay to set it apart from its predecessors. It’s not a Strike out just yet, but it’s not batting too well against chart-topper arcade choppers like Black Dawn.

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Guaranteed Retaliation: How the Russian Perimeter System Works

Perimeter is designed to automatically control a massive nuclear strike and is an alternative command system for the country’s nuclear forces. The main strategic missile control system is called «Kazbek» — it is known thanks to the subscriber complex «Cheget» or «nuclear briefcase».

Our armored train

The development of the guaranteed retaliatory strike system began at the height of the Cold War, when it became clear that the continuously improving means of electronic warfare in the near future would be able to block the regular control channels of strategic nuclear forces. A backup method of communication was needed to ensure that commands were delivered to the launchers.

An idea arose to use a command rocket equipped with a powerful radio transmitter as a liaison. Flying over the Soviet Union, such a missile would transmit commands to launch missiles not only to the command posts of the Strategic Missile Forces formations, but also directly to the launchers. On August 30, 1974, by a closed decree of the USSR government No. 695-227, the development of the system was entrusted to the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Dnepropetrovsk, which was engaged in the creation of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Based on the product UR-100UTTH (according to NATO classification Spanker, trotter). A special warhead with a transmitter was designed at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, and it was manufactured by the Orenburg NPO Strela. To aim the missile in azimuth, a fully autonomous system with an automatic gyrocompass and a quantum optical gyrometer is used. She can calculate the direction of flight in the process of putting the missile on combat duty and save it even in the event of a nuclear impact on the launcher.

Flight tests began in 1979, the first launch with a transmitter was successfully made on 26 December. The tests confirmed the successful interaction of all components of the Perimeter system, as well as the ability of the head of the command missile to maintain a given trajectory — its top was at an altitude of 4000 meters with a range of 4500 kilometers.

In November 1984, a command missile launched from near Polotsk transferred command to the RS-20 (SS-18 Satan) ICBM silo launcher at Baikonur. «Satan» started and after working out all the stages, the warhead was recorded hitting a given square at the Kamchatka Kura training ground. January 1985 years «Perimeter» stood on combat duty. Since then, the system has been modernized more than once, now modern ICBMs are used as command missiles.

Get up, huge country

Command ballistic missiles are the basis of the system. They do not fly at the enemy, but over Russia, and instead of thermonuclear warheads, they have transmitters in their warheads that send out a launch command to all available combat missiles: in mines, aircraft, submarines and mobile ground complexes. Those are equipped with command receivers and start. The system is fully automated, the human factor in its work is excluded or minimal.

The decision to launch command missiles is made by an autonomous control and command system — a complex software system based on artificial intelligence. It receives and analyzes a wide variety of information: about seismic and radiation activity, atmospheric pressure, the intensity of radio traffic on military frequencies, controls telemetry from the observation posts of the Strategic Missile Forces and data from the missile attack warning system.

Having detected, for example, multiple point sources of powerful ionizing and electromagnetic radiation and comparing them with data on seismic disturbances in the same coordinates, the system comes to the conclusion about a massive nuclear strike. In this case, «Perimeter» can initiate a retaliatory strike even bypassing «Kazbek».

Another option — having received information from the early warning system about the launch of missiles from the territory of other countries, the country’s leadership puts «Perimeter» into combat mode. If after a certain time there is no command to turn off, the system will start launching missiles. This solution eliminates the human factor and guarantees a retaliatory strike even with the complete destruction of the command and launch crews.

Four «ifs»

One of the developers of «Perimeter» Vladimir Yarynich admitted that he did not know a reliable way to disable the system. The command and control system, its sensors and missiles are designed to operate under conditions of a nuclear attack.

In peacetime, «Perimeter» is in a calm state — one might say, «sleeping» — without ceasing, however, to analyze the incoming information. When switching to combat mode or receiving an alarm signal from early warning systems, strategic missile forces and other systems, monitoring of the sensor network is launched to detect signs of nuclear explosions.

Before running the retaliation algorithm, the Perimeter checks for four conditions. First, whether there was a nuclear attack. Then the presence of communication with the General Staff is checked — if there is a connection, the system is turned off. If the General Staff does not answer, «Perimeter» requests «Kazbek». If they are silent there too, artificial intelligence transfers the right to make a decision to any person in the command bunker. And only after that it starts to work.

In NATO, the creation of a nuclear strike system operating without a human command was called immoral. Meanwhile, the United States also has a similar complex.

RF worked out the tasks of applying a massive nuclear strike — DW — 26.10.2022

Mobile ground missile complex «Yars» (photo from the archive) Photo: Kirill KudryavTSev/AFP/Getty Images

Conflicts

Ekaterina Venterina Ventire

10/26/2022 26 October 2022

Russia has conducted a nuclear triad drill amid Kremlin allegations of a «dirty bomb» Ukraine is allegedly planning to detonate.

https://p.dw.com/p/4Iijq

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Russia conducted a training exercise of its ground, sea and air strategic deterrence forces, which included practical launches of ballistic and cruise missiles. This was announced on Wednesday, October 26, in the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

«The tasks of launching a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to an enemy nuclear strike» have been worked out, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

An intercontinental ballistic missile «Yars» was launched from the Plesetsk test cosmodrome using a mobile ground-based missile system of the Strategic Missile Forces of the RF Armed Forces.

A R-29RMU2 «Sineva» ballistic missile was launched from the Barents Sea. The strategic missile submarine of the Northern Fleet «Tula» was involved.

The Kremlin’s press service specified that the tests were carried out at the Kura training ground in Kamchatka.

Two Tu-95MS long-range strategic missile carriers launched air-launched cruise missiles.

«Russia often blames others for what it has planned to do»

The training was held against the backdrop of Moscow’s allegations of a «dirty bomb» that Ukraine allegedly plans to explode. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, while visiting the American aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Mediterranean, warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against using false pretexts to further escalate the war against Ukraine.

«Russia should not use fictitious pretexts for further escalation. Allegations that Ukraine plans to use a «dirty bomb» with radioactive material on its territory are pure lies,» Stoltenberg said. «Russia often blames others for what it itself has planned to do,» the NATO Secretary General said, adding that the world community is closely following what is happening.

The second maneuvers of the Russian Federation with the participation of the nuclear triad since the beginning of the year

The training was planned. The Russian nuclear exercise Grom usually involves large-scale maneuvers of strategic nuclear forces, including launches of live missiles. US officials waited several weeks for the annual exercise, and shortly before it began, they received reports from Russia that it was taking place. The maneuvers of the Russian nuclear forces are regularly held in October, but they were canceled in 2021. This year, the relevant warnings for international aviation and ships remain in effect until 29October.

This is already the second major maneuver of this kind in 2022. The planned exercises, in which the forces of the Russian nuclear triad took part, were held by the Russian Federation on February 19 — shortly before the start of the war against Ukraine on February 24. After that, on February 27, Putin announced that he was transferring the deterrence forces «to a special mode of combat duty.»

NATO conducts nuclear exercises until October 30

NATO’s Steadfast Noon nuclear exercises take place on October 17-30 with the participation of the air forces of 14 countries of the alliance. The maneuvers, in which 60 aircraft take part, pass over the territories of Belgium, Great Britain and the North Sea, the North Atlantic Alliance reported. The US Air Force B-52H strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons take part in the aviation part of the exercises of NATO nuclear forces. The Alliance stressed that Steadfast Noon are planned maneuvers.

The aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush is currently leading another NATO exercise, Neptune Strike 2022, which involves more than 80 aircraft, 14 ships and about 6,000 troops from NATO countries and alliance partners. The exercise tests NATO’s ability to deter and defend in the Euro-Atlantic region.

India warned of «unacceptable nuclear option»

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on October 26 discussed the «dirty bomb» situation by telephone with Indian Defense Minister Rajnat Singh, as well as with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe. Rajnath Singh, during a conversation with the Russian minister, stressed that «it is unacceptable to resort to the nuclear option» in the war in Ukraine.

Over the weekend, Shoigu held telephone conversations with the heads of the defense departments of the United States, Great Britain, France and Turkey, in which he informed his colleagues about Kyiv’s alleged intention to stage a provocation with the explosion of a «dirty bomb». Ukraine says the Kremlin is conducting a disinformation campaign and is itself preparing to commit a provocation using nuclear materials.