WI: 1983 RC-135 Shootdown

Delta Force

Banned
During the KAL-007 shoot down incident a United States Air Force RC-135 happened to be operating in the area in order to monitor a Soviet missile test. Soviet command and control was complicated due to radar in the area being knocked out, and in the haste to make an interception the commander of Soviet Air Defense Forces in the sector said the plane could be shot down even over international airspace following positive identification as a military aircraft, while the head of the base that launched the intercepts went further to claim that no positive identification would be needed at all because it had already violated Soviet air space.

What if the combination of knocked out radar systems, an aggressive command approach, and scenario fulfillment leads to the Soviet Air Defense Forces stumbling across the RC-135 and confusing it with KAL-007, shooting it down over international waters without cause?

Aircraft from USS Midway and USS Enterprise repeatedly overflew Soviet military installations in the disputed Kuril Islands during FleetEx '83,[29] resulting in the dismissal or reprimanding of Soviet military officials who had been unable to shoot them down.[30] On the Soviet side, RYAN was expanded.[30] Lastly, there was a heightened alert around the Kamchatka Peninsula at the time KAL 007 was in the vicinity, because of a Soviet missile test that was scheduled for the same day. A United States Air Force Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft flying in the area was monitoring the missile test off the peninsula.[31]

At 15:51 UTC, according to Soviet sources,[23] KAL 007 entered the restricted airspace of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The buffer zone extended 200 kilometres (120 mi) from Kamchatka's coast and is known as a flight information region (FIR). The 100-kilometre (62 mi) radius of the buffer zone nearest to Soviet territory had the additional designation of prohibited airspace. When KAL 007 was about 130 kilometres (81 mi) from the Kamchatka coast, four MiG-23 fighters were scrambled to intercept the Boeing 747.[8]

Significant command and control problems were experienced trying to vector the fast military jets onto the Boeing before they ran out of fuel. In addition, pursuit was made more difficult, according to Soviet Air Force Captain Aleksandr Zuyev, who defected to the West in 1989, because Arctic gales had knocked out Soviet radar ten days before.[32] The unidentified jetliner therefore crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula back into international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk without being intercepted.

The Commander of the Soviet Far East District Air Defense Forces, General Valery Kamensky,[33] was adamant that KAL 007 was to be destroyed even over neutral waters but only after positive identification showed it not to be a passenger plane. His subordinate, General Anatoly Kornukov, commander of Sokol Air Base and later to become commander of the Russian Air Force, insisted that there was no need to make positive identification as "the intruder" had already flown over the Kamchatka Peninsula.
 
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All hell breaks loose is putting it mildly. The US demands the soviets apologise the Soviets demand an apology from the US. Alot of shouting between D.C and Moscow ensues and tensions rise to Cuban missile crisis levels.Where it goes from there i don't know.
 
This is the same year the Soviet leadership had their panic over US actions and considered launching a nuclear strike & other war actions. Not sure of the date of that event & its relationship to the KAL event. Would i be enough to tip things into catastrophe ?
 
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