Last week, former Russian and current vice president of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, aroused worldwide curiosity by quoting a term in a response to the American agent Donald Trump: dead hand.
After the US President decreased for ten days the deadline for Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire with Ukraine, at risk of secondary tariffs, Medvedev threatened Trump on Telegram.
“As for the conversation about the ‘dead economies’ of India [que seria fortemente atingida pelas tarifas secundárias dos EUA] and Russia, and ‘get into dangerous territory’ – perhaps he [Trump] It should be remembered your favorite movies about ‘undead’, and also remember how dangerous the so-called ‘dead hand’, ”wrote Medvedev.
The term dead hand is used to designate a Russian automatic system that would be able to respond with nuclear weapons to such an attack on Russia even though its main political and military leaders were killed.
In an article published in 2022, Blake Stilwell, former American military man and editor of the specialized Military.com website, explained that the dead hand is the nickname given in the West to the perimeter Russian system.
Over the years, many theories about dead hand functioning (whether it would be semi -automatic or totally automatic, for example) have been speculated, but according to Stilwell, the predominant description is that it is a command and control system that measures communications on military frequencies, radiation levels, atmospheric pressure, heat and short -term seismic disturbances.
“If the measurement points to a nuclear attack, the perimeter begins a sequence that would culminate in the shooting of all intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBMs, na sigla em inglês] of the Soviet Arsenal (today, Russian), ”said the expert.
In this context, the perimeter would launch a command rocket, which would travel all Russia, equipped with a radio warhead capable of transmitting launch orders to Russian nuclear silos, even if there were radio interference.
The perimeter went into operation in 1985, and although its existence was not confirmed by the then Soviet Union, General Sergei Karakaev, commander of Russia’s strategic missile forces, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in 2011 that the system existed and would be able to destroy the United States in 30 minutes.
“Yes, the perimeter system exists today. It is in combat service. And when there is a need for a retaliatory attack, when there is no way to transmit a signal to some of the launchers, this command may come from these perimeter rockets,” said Karakaev.
Now, with the threat of Medvedev to Trump, the world has confirmed that the dead hand still exists.
“It was part of the Cold War doctrine of Mutual Destruction, a means of determining nuclear attacks ensuring that the side that started the first attack was also annihilated,” wrote Stilwell.
Considering that Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world – according to data from the International Campaign NGO coalition to abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the country has 5,449 nuclear warheads – another nickname has been used in the West to describe the dead hand: Device device.
