© by Mark Ollig
Sixty years ago, its objective was to ensure both countries could communicate quickly and clearly to prevent a nuclear war.
In early 1963, the US proposed installing a direct phone line, or hotline, between President Kennedy and Russian Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Kennedy’s proposal resulted from events during October 1962, when the Soviet Union secretly deployed offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba.
These nuclear weapons, if launched, would strike US cities within minutes.
Communications between the Kremlin and the Pentagon were plagued by delayed encrypted messages relayed by slow and periodically unreliable telegraph and radio systems.
President Kennedy demanded the missiles removal, but the Soviet leader refused.
This situation became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense two-week period that nearly triggered a nuclear war that would have likely caused the mutual destruction of both nations.
The US had an arsenal of 25,500 warheads at the time, while the Soviet Union possessed an estimated 3,350.
Thankfully, President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev resolved the missile crisis peacefully.
The fear of future misunderstandings and miscalculations led to a mutual agreement to improve communications between the two countries.
It was decided that a dedicated direct phone circuit would be installed between Washington, DC, and the Kremlin in Moscow.
The US location of the hotline is the National Military Command Center in the basement of the Pentagon in Washington, DC.
This US-Russian hotline, formally known as the Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link, was believed by many to include a red telephone wired from Washington to Moscow.
Communicating over the US-Russian hotline was performed using teleprinters or teletype machines, not telephones.
On Aug. 30, 1963, a full-duplex encrypted direct communication link was established between Moscow and Washington, DC. As a result, messages could now be quickly transmitted and received between the two countries.
After exchanging initial test text messages, the Pentagon announced the communications link was “completely satisfactory.”
They then declared the new direct communications link (DCL) “operational and made available for exchange of official messages between the two governments.”
“The direct communications link between Washington and Moscow is now operational,” read a statement from the US Defense Department.
A buried physical copper cable connection between the Pentagon and the Kremlin was routed from Washington, DC, to London, England, over the Transatlantic Cable No.1 (TAT-1). It then continued via buried physical copper cable through Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki, ending in Moscow.
I learned that the copper cable’s splicing terminations in London were underground in a protected telephone circuit switching exchange.
Cryptography protocols securely protected the information transmitted and received over the cable; however, it was reported that the cable was accidentally cut numerous times.
In addition to the primary hotline physical link over the TAT-1 cable, an auxiliary full-duplex radio link existed, which served as an alternative backup link.
The Pentagon’s hotline teletype machine was operated by the United States Army Signal Corps and housed in a secure bunker beneath the White House in Washington, DC.
Both the primary and backup direct communications links were tested daily.
The hotline is a secure telecommunication system that allows officials from both countries to exchange messages and hold discussions in real time.
The system is staffed by trained operators available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
On Sept. 30, 1971, the United States and the Soviet Union reached an agreement to enhance the dependability of the hotline.
Both agreed to abandon the terrestrial radio link and put two dedicated satellite circuit channels into service for the hotline.
On Jan. 23, 1972, the 3,058-pound Intelsat (International Telecommunications Satellite) IV F-4 launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, atop an Atlas SLV-3D Centaur-D rocket and was placed in a geostationary orbit above the Earth.
The US dedicated one highly-secured satellite channel through the Intelsat IV F-4 for the US-Russian hotline.
The USSR established the other satellite channel using its Molniya-2 (11F628) communication satellite, which kept a highly elliptical orbit over our planet.
In May of 1983, President Reagan suggested upgrading the hotline with high-speed facsimile capabilities. The Soviet Union formally agreed to this July 17, 1984.
Since 1990, voice communications with Moscow officials over the hotline have been available, most likely using direct voice link (DVL) satellite channels.
On Jan. 1, 2008, a highly-secured computer network became operational using two dedicated satellite channels between Moscow and Washington, DC.
Also, in 2008, an older backup copper cable used with the hotline was replaced with a fiber optic cable.
Over the past 60 years, many US presidents have used the hotline.
Two films depicting the use of the hotline are “Fail Safe” (1964) and “The Sum of All Fears” (2002).
So far, communication between the two superpowers using the hotline has prevented disagreements from escalating into a direct military confrontation.
The United States Department of State and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs operate the US-Russian hotline.
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| Air Force Sgt_John Brotoski and Army Lt_Col_Charles Fitzgerald Testing the "Hotline" at The US Pentagon (August 1963) |