{"id":4159281,"date":"2026-01-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/norwegian-rocket-incident-1995-yeltsin-cheget\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T09:45:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T07:45:38","slug":"incident-de-fusee-norvegienne-1995-yeltsin-cheget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/norwegian-rocket-incident-1995-yeltsin-cheget\/","title":{"rendered":"La fus\u00e9e scientifique qui a ouvert la mallette nucl\u00e9aire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\n\n<style>\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid #0F1720;background:#fff;color:#0F1720;font-family:inherit;font-size:14px;font-weight:700;line-height:1;letter-spacing:0;text-transform:none;cursor:pointer;box-shadow:none;transition:background .15s,color 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It was carrying instruments to study the aurora borealis \u2014 the same northern lights that shimmer over the archipelago all winter. The launch was clean. The team began tracking their experiment. Nothing about the moment suggested that, 1,000 kilometres to the east, officers of the Russian early-warning service were watching the same dot of light and reaching for very different procedures.<\/p>\r\n<p>At the Olenegorsk radar station on the Kola Peninsula, the object rising out of the Norwegian Sea looked uncomfortably familiar: the speed, the arc, the staging of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. Not any missile \u2014 a Trident, the kind carried by American submarines that patrol beneath exactly those waters. And a single Trident, fired from the Barents Sea, fitted a scenario Russian planners had worried about for years: one warhead, detonated high over the country, whose electromagnetic pulse would blind the radars before the real attack followed.<\/p>\r\n<p>Within minutes, the alert had climbed further up the Russian chain of command than any before or since. In Moscow, for the first and \u2014 as far as anyone knows \u2014 only time in the nuclear age, the briefcase from which a president can authorise nuclear launch was activated in earnest. The Cold War had been over for three years. The scientists on And\u00f8ya had done everything by the book. And the book had failed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f5f5f5; border-radius: 8px; padding: 20px 24px; margin: 24px 0;\">\r\n<p style=\"margin: 0 0 10px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 17px;\">Quick Facts: The Norwegian Rocket Incident<\/p>\r\n<table style=\"border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.6;\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">Date<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">25 January 1995<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">The rocket<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">Black Brant XII, a four-stage scientific sounding rocket<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">Launched from<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">And\u00f8ya Rocket Range, northern Norway<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">Mission<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">Studying the aurora borealis over Svalbard; apogee roughly 1,450 km (900 mi)<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">Mistaken for<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">A US Navy Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile from the Barents Sea<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">The alarm reached<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">President Boris Yeltsin \u2014 the only publicly known activation of a nuclear briefcase<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">Decision window<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">About ten minutes, most of it spent tracking the trajectory<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 12px 4px 0; font-weight: 600; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: top;\">Root cause<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 4px 0;\">Norway\u2019s advance notification never reached Russia\u2019s radar crews<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">A Rocket for the Northern Lights<\/h2>\r\n<p>And\u00f8ya had been launching scientific rockets since the 1960s, and Russia\u2019s northern neighbours knew it. What was different in January 1995 was the rocket itself. The Black Brant XII was the largest vehicle the range had ever flown: four stages, a trajectory arcing to roughly 1,450 kilometres of altitude \u2014 higher than the International Space Station flies today \u2014 and a burn profile far closer to a military missile than the modest single-stage sounders that had come before it.<\/p>\r\n<p>The experiment was pure science, part of a joint campaign to study the aurora over Svalbard. But physics does not label its intentions. To a radar, a big solid-fuelled rocket climbing steeply out of the Norwegian Sea is a shape and a velocity, nothing more.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"max-width: 100%; height: auto; border-radius: 6px;\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/andoya-rocket-range-launch-facility-norway.jpg\" alt=\"Rocket launch facility at Andoya Rocket Range in northern Norway\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">The rocket range on And\u00f8ya, Norway \u2014 a scientific site since the 1960s. In 1995 its biggest rocket yet triggered Russia\u2019s early-warning system. Photo: Wikimedia Commons \/ CC BY-SA 2.0.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p>There was, in fact, a label attached \u2014 a diplomatic one. Weeks earlier, on 21 December 1994, the launch team had asked the Norwegian Foreign Ministry to notify Russia and more than two dozen other states of the coming campaign, exactly as they always did. The letter went out. What happened to it afterwards is the quiet hinge of the whole story, and we will come back to it.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">On Russian Screens, a Trident<\/h2>\r\n<p>To understand the panic at Olenegorsk, it helps to know what Russian planners feared most in the 1990s. It was not a massed American first strike out of nowhere \u2014 that would be visible, unmistakable, and answered in kind. It was the decapitation scenario: a single missile, fired from a submarine close to Russian shores, detonating a warhead at high altitude to generate an electromagnetic pulse that would blind radars and paralyse command links \u2014 the opening note of an attack the defenders would never see arriving.<\/p>\r\n<p>A Trident II launched from the Barents Sea could reach Russian territory in roughly ten minutes. That number dictated everything: whatever the object on the screen was, the window for deciding how to answer it was about as long as a coffee break.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1Lmoq0i4uDA\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>The Black Brant XII was a plausible impostor. Its size and staging resembled a Trident\u2019s; as its boosters separated, the radar picture reportedly took on the look of a missile releasing multiple warheads. And its trajectory, bending towards Svalbard, passed through a corridor that Russian planners associated with flight paths between American missile fields and Moscow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"max-width: 100%; height: auto; border-radius: 6px;\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/trident-ii-d5-slbm-underwater-launch.jpg\" alt=\"Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile breaking the surface during an underwater launch\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">What Olenegorsk thought it was seeing: a Trident II D5 rising from the sea. From the Barents, one could reach Russia in about ten minutes. US Navy photo, public domain.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p>Alarm klaxons sounded at Russian early-warning headquarters. The track was passed upward \u2014 not sideways into an archive of scientific launch notifications, but upward, through the General Staff, towards the man who had inherited the Soviet arsenal.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">The Briefcase Opens<\/h2>\r\n<p>Russia\u2019s nuclear command system, like America\u2019s, travels with its president. The device is called Cheget \u2014 a briefcase, one of three (the president\u2019s, the defence minister\u2019s, the chief of the General Staff\u2019s), that together form the electronic conference through which a launch order can be authorised. On the morning of 25 January 1995, the briefcases came alive. Boris Yeltsin, Defence Minister Pavel Grachev and General Mikhail Kolesnikov were connected in an emergency session while the radar crews watched the track.<\/p>\r\n<p>It is the only time any nuclear-armed state is publicly known to have activated the apparatus in response to a live warning. How close the moment actually came to a launch decision is, honestly, unknowable from outside: post-Soviet Russia has never released the minutes, and accounts from officials and analysts differ \u2014 some describe a genuinely dangerous scramble, others an alert handled well within its margins. What is documented is what Yeltsin himself said to reporters the next day.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f8f9fa; border-left: 4px solid #5C91FF; padding: 20px 22px; margin: 18px 0 24px; border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.7;\"><em>\u201cI have indeed used yesterday for the first time my \u2018little black case\u2019 with a button that is always with me. I immediately contacted the Defense Ministry and all the military commanders that I require and we were following the path of this missile from beginning to end.\u201d<\/em>\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 10px; font-size: 14px; color: #555;\"><strong>Boris Yeltsin<\/strong> \u2014 to reporters, 26 January 1995<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>The path saved everyone. Some eight of the ten available minutes were reportedly consumed tracking the object before its trajectory made the truth plain: it was heading out towards Svalbard and the sea, not inland towards Russia. The stand-down flowed back down the chain. Twenty-four minutes after launch, the spent experiment fell, as planned, near Spitsbergen. The scientists on And\u00f8ya packed up an entirely successful mission, unaware they had briefly been the most dangerous men in Europe.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"max-width: 100%; height: auto; border-radius: 6px;\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/boris-yeltsin-1995-hyde-park-summit-1.jpg\" alt=\"Boris Yeltsin with Bill Clinton at the Hyde Park summit in October 1995\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">Yeltsin with Bill Clinton in October 1995, nine months after the incident. His government lodged a protest with Norway; procedures were tightened. White House photo, public domain.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">The Letter That Never Arrived<\/h2>\r\n<p>Then came the reckoning with the paperwork. Norway had notified Russia \u2014 formally, in writing, through the embassy in Oslo, a month in advance. The message had simply died somewhere in the bureaucracy between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the men at the radar consoles. The most dangerous ten minutes of the post-Cold-War era were caused not by a rogue general or a failed computer, but by an unforwarded letter.<\/p>\r\n<p>For students of nuclear risk, that is precisely what makes 1995 so instructive. The hardware worked. The radars detected a real object and characterised it plausibly. Every human in the chain did his duty. The failure lived in the seams between institutions \u2014 the same seams that no amount of missile engineering can close. One former CIA analyst, Peter Vincent Pry, who documented the episode in his book War Scare, rendered a verdict that still startles.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f8f9fa; border-left: 4px solid #5C91FF; padding: 20px 22px; margin: 18px 0 24px; border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.7;\"><em>\u201cThe single most dangerous moment of the nuclear missile age.\u201d<\/em>\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 10px; font-size: 14px; color: #555;\"><strong>Peter Vincent Pry<\/strong> \u2014 former CIA analyst, in War Scare (1999)<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>Not everyone agrees \u2014 some scholars argue the Russian system in fact proved itself, catching and correcting the error with minutes to spare. Both readings can be true: the safeguards held, and it is disquieting that they were needed at all, three years after the Cold War\u2019s end, against a weather rocket.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JzpW-ZLRBu4\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">The Quietest Close Call<\/h2>\r\n<p>The aftermath was undramatic, which is its own lesson. Moscow protested; Oslo apologised for nothing while promising better notification procedures; the two countries quietly improved their channels. And\u00f8ya kept launching \u2014 it launches to this day, now as And\u00f8ya Space. The incident might have vanished entirely had Yeltsin not volunteered his remark about the little black case, turning an internal alert into a historical record.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vXQ_9ar652w\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>Of the three great nuclear false alarms \u2014 1962\u2019s Black Saturday, Petrov\u2019s night in 1983, and this one \u2014 the Norwegian incident is the least known and, in one way, the most unsettling. The others happened at the height of confrontation, when everyone expected the worst. This one happened in peacetime, between countries on friendly terms, over an aurora experiment. The machinery of nuclear alarm does not care what era it is. It only sees shapes and velocities \u2014 and it is always switched on.<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Sources: Wikipedia; Nuclear Museum \/ Atomic Heritage Foundation; Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; Smithsonian Magazine; Russia Matters (Harvard); Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare. Russian-side specifics remain partly unverifiable and are hedged accordingly.<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\n\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\n\r\n<!-- mf-faq -->\r\n\r\n\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-block\"><style>.mf-faq-block{margin:34px 0}.mf-faq-item:not([open]) .mf-faq-answer{display:none !important}.mf-faq-block h2.mf-faq-h{padding-top:22px;margin-bottom:14px}.mf-faq-item{border:1px solid #e2e8f5;border-radius:8px;margin:0 0 10px;background:#fff}.mf-faq-item summary{list-style:none;cursor:pointer;padding:15px 50px 15px 18px;font-weight:600;color:#1a1a1a;position:relative;line-height:1.45;user-select:none}.mf-faq-item summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mf-faq-item summary::after{content:\"+\";position:absolute;right:18px;top:50%;transform:translateY(-50%);font-size:1.5em;font-weight:400;color:#5C91FF;line-height:1}.mf-faq-item[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mf-faq-item[open] summary{border-bottom:1px solid #eef1f8}.mf-faq-item summary:hover{background:#f5f8ff}.mf-faq-answer{padding:14px 18px;color:#333;line-height:1.6}.mf-faq-answer p{margin:0}.mf-faq-answer a{color:#5C91FF}<\/style>\r\n<h2 class=\"mf-faq-h\">Related Questions<\/h2>\r\n<details class=\"mf-faq-item\">\r\n<summary>What was the Norwegian rocket incident?<\/summary>\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-answer\">\r\n<p>The Norwegian rocket incident was a nuclear false alarm on 25 January 1995, when a Norwegian-American scientific rocket launched from And\u00f8ya to study the aurora borealis was briefly mistaken by Russian early-warning radar for a submarine-launched ballistic missile. It triggered Russia's nuclear command apparatus before the rocket's path showed it heading harmlessly out to sea \u2014 one of the Cold War era's <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/nuclear-near-disasters-cold-war-series\/\">closest nuclear near-misses<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/details><details class=\"mf-faq-item\">\r\n<summary>Why did Russia think the Black Brant rocket was a missile?<\/summary>\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-answer\">\r\n<p>Russian radar operators at Olenegorsk on the Kola Peninsula saw a large, multi-stage rocket rising steeply from the Norwegian Sea, with a speed, arc and staging profile resembling a US Trident submarine-launched missile. A single Trident could have been a high-altitude nuclear burst meant to blind Russian radar before a larger strike, which made the ambiguous track especially alarming.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/details><details class=\"mf-faq-item\">\r\n<summary>Did Boris Yeltsin activate the nuclear briefcase?<\/summary>\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-answer\">\r\n<p>Yes. Russian President Boris Yeltsin later said he activated his nuclear briefcase \u2014 the Cheget device that authorises a nuclear response \u2014 for the first time during the 25 January 1995 incident. It is the only time a nuclear-armed state is publicly known to have engaged this apparatus in response to a live warning. No launch order was given.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/details><details class=\"mf-faq-item\">\r\n<summary>What caused the 1995 Norwegian rocket false alarm?<\/summary>\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-answer\">\r\n<p>The alarm stemmed from a bureaucratic failure. Norway had formally notified Russia weeks in advance, in writing, about the scientific launch, but the message never reached the radar crews \u2014 it died somewhere between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the early-warning stations. The rocket itself was a harmless aurora-research mission; the danger came entirely from the unforwarded notification.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/details><details class=\"mf-faq-item\">\r\n<summary>What is a Black Brant rocket?<\/summary>\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-answer\">\r\n<p>The Black Brant is a family of Canadian-designed sounding rockets used for scientific research in the upper atmosphere. The 1995 incident involved a four-stage Black Brant XII launched from the And\u00f8ya range in Arctic Norway to study the northern lights. It was the biggest rocket ever flown from that site at the time, which is why its trajectory resembled a military missile.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/details><details class=\"mf-faq-item\">\r\n<summary>How close did the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident come to nuclear war?<\/summary>\r\n<div class=\"mf-faq-answer\">\r\n<p>Accounts differ. Yeltsin said commanders tracked the rocket from beginning to end, and roughly eight of about ten available minutes reportedly passed before its trajectory made clear it was heading toward Svalbard and open sea, not Russia. The episode echoes the 1983 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/stanislav-petrov-1983-nuclear-false-alarm\/\">Soviet satellite false alarm<\/a>, when human judgement again overrode an alarming warning.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/details><\/div>\r\n<p><script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Norwegian rocket incident?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Norwegian rocket incident was a nuclear false alarm on 25 January 1995, when a Norwegian-American scientific rocket launched from And\u00f8ya to study the aurora borealis was briefly mistaken by Russian early-warning radar for a submarine-launched ballistic missile. It triggered Russia's nuclear command apparatus before the rocket's path showed it heading harmlessly out to sea \u2014 one of the Cold War era's <a href=\\\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/nuclear-near-disasters-cold-war-series\/\\\">closest nuclear near-misses<\/a>.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why did Russia think the Black Brant rocket was a missile?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Russian radar operators at Olenegorsk on the Kola Peninsula saw a large, multi-stage rocket rising steeply from the Norwegian Sea, with a speed, arc and staging profile resembling a US Trident submarine-launched missile. A single Trident could have been a high-altitude nuclear burst meant to blind Russian radar before a larger strike, which made the ambiguous track especially alarming.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did Boris Yeltsin activate the nuclear briefcase?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Yes. Russian President Boris Yeltsin later said he activated his nuclear briefcase \u2014 the Cheget device that authorises a nuclear response \u2014 for the first time during the 25 January 1995 incident. It is the only time a nuclear-armed state is publicly known to have engaged this apparatus in response to a live warning. No launch order was given.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What caused the 1995 Norwegian rocket false alarm?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The alarm stemmed from a bureaucratic failure. Norway had formally notified Russia weeks in advance, in writing, about the scientific launch, but the message never reached the radar crews \u2014 it died somewhere between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the early-warning stations. 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Yeltsin said commanders tracked the rocket from beginning to end, and roughly eight of about ten available minutes reportedly passed before its trajectory made clear it was heading toward Svalbard and open sea, not Russia. The episode echoes the 1983 <a href=\\\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/stanislav-petrov-1983-nuclear-false-alarm\/\\\">Soviet satellite false alarm<\/a>, when human judgement again overrode an alarming warning.\"}}]}<\/script><!-- \/mf-faq -->\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f5f5f5; border-radius: 8px; padding: 20px 24px; margin: 28px 0 8px;\">\r\n<p style=\"margin: 0 0 10px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 17px;\">Related Posts<\/p>\r\n<ul style=\"margin: 0; padding-left: 20px; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.8;\">\r\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/mica-ng-first-supersonic-launch-rafale-2026\/\">France Fires Its New Missile: MICA NG<\/a><\/li>\r\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/nato-saab-globaleye-replace-e-3-awacs-2026\/\">NATO\u2019s Next Radar Jet Is Swedish<\/a><\/li>\r\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/europe-fcas-ngf-fighter-cancelled-dassault-airbus\/\">Europe\u2019s FCAS Fighter Died. What Now?<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Share this story On the morning of 25 January 1995, on the island of And\u00f8ya in Arctic Norway, a team of Norwegian and American scientists watched a four-stage Black Brant XII sounding rocket climb away from its launcher and curve north-east over the sea towards Svalbard. It was carrying instruments to study the aurora borealis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":4158160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Norwegian Rocket Incident: Yeltsin&#039;s Nuclear Scare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 1995 Norwegian rocket incident saw a science launch mistaken for a submarine missile \u2014 and opened Boris Yeltsin&#039;s nuclear briefcase.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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