From: Theodore A Postol <postol@mit.edu>
Date: Tue, May 28, 2024 at 11:09 AM
Subject: EXTREMELY ALARMING NEW DEVELOPMENT-- UkranianS Attack A SECOND Russian Nuclear Strategic Early Warning Radar
To: Wu, Riqiang <wu_riqiang@tsinghua.edu.cn>, Li Bin <libin@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn>
Dear Riqiang and Li Bin:
I am writing to alert you to an extremely alarming new development that poses a direct and immediate threat to the security of United States, Western Europe, China and Russia.
A few days ago, the Ukranian’s attacked and damaged two Russian UHF nuclear strategic early warning radars at Armavir in Russia. These radars have search fans that cover the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The Ukrainians have now attacked a second critical Russian nuclear strategic early warning radar at Orsk.
I suggest that you may want to consider forwarding this email, along with its attachments, to China’s Foreign Ministry, as they might not be aware of some details about Russia’s Satellite Early Warning systems that I will elaborate on below.
I have already alerted, through personal contacts, the Secretary-General of the UN, key individuals in the White House, the US State Department, and the US Joint Chiefs of Staffs and the Chancellor's Office in Germany.
The radar at Orsk looks towards the Indian Ocean and has some overlap with the radar fans from the already damaged radar at Armavir.
The initial indicators are that the amount of damage to the Orsk is likely limited, but it cannot be ruled out that the radar is not functioning for the moment due to the attack.
This is a very serious situation, and we cannot at the moment rule out that there will be other attempts to damage the radar at Orsk, or worse yet, other radars that Russia operates looking into the North Atlantic and towards the United States.
It is therefore of extreme importance that your Foreign Ministy be alerted to the implications of these events.
Unlike the United States, the Russians do not have space-based satellite warning systems that can see ballistic missile attacks globally. This means that the radar coverage lost by the attacks on these radars greatly reduces the warning time against attacks on Moscow from the Mediterranean and Indian oceans.
The Russians have a radar operating in Moscow that can see arriving warheads but they would only begin to see the warheads above the horizon at very short times before impacts.
My estimates (based on real analysis) is that the radar early warning times have been reduced from about 15 to 16 minutes to about 10 to 11, or even possibly even as short as 8 minutes.
This amount of warning time might quite possibly eliminate the possibility of any deliberation-time on the part of Russian leaders if they were confronted with a decision of whether or not to launch Russian strategic nuclear forces in response to a nuclear attack on Moscow.
As the two chart charts illustrate below:
Russian political leadership in Moscow would have almost no time to assess the situation if they believed a possible attack from the south was underway.
The extreme time-pressure on Russian leadership could thereby significantly increase the possibilities of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
I have extensive personal experiences over more than 20 years with people at the White House that indicate to me it is entirely possible that Blinken and his team are not aware of the dangers associated with these reckless Ukrainian actions.
In particular, it is quite possible that they have no idea of the extremely important limitations of Russia’s space-based infrared early warning systems.
I will not spend time herein describing my personal experiences and observations on this matter, but I can tell you for sure that there is very substantial evidence that US leadership has failed to understand this very critical shortfall in Russia’s early warning systems. If you and need more insights about this very serious lack of knowledge in US leadership, I could go into greater detail and explain the evidence of their lack of knowledge. It therefore cannot be ruled out that the White House is completely unaware of the danger from this shortfall in Russia’s space-based early warning systems.
Since we know each other very well, and you are both highly technically skilled, you may be able to act as interpreters for your Foreign Ministry about this matter. Obviously, it is up to you and I need not be further informed by you of any actions you take or not.
Please feel free to contact me at any time if you think I can supply you with more information on this matter.
I cannot emphasize enough how frightening and dangerous this development is – at least to me, who I think can claim a rather detailed knowledge of the nuclear strike systems of both Russia and United States.
Best regards, Ted
Cell: 617-543-7646