This is a very deep article into the war game and war thinking of the time. The early 80s was a very tense period, not only because of the arrayed nuclear arsenals and conventional forces on either side of the Iron Curtain, but also the uncertainty civilians had in the respective leaderships that came into sharp focus during moments of crisis - after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the political infighting and reshuffles following Brezhnev's death, and the drumbeat of incidents and provocations around the barbed wire, in the skies, and on the high seas.