It was wrong on both counts: the warheads were already on the island and each submarine carried one nuclear torpedo one even came close to using it against the American fleet. For instance, the Kennedy administration thought it could safely authorize a quarantine of Cuba because nuclear warheads appeared not to have arrived on the island yet (1) similarly, it thought it could safely use “practice” depth charges to force three Soviet submarines near Cuba to surface because it never considered that they might carry nuclear torpedoes. It creates the twin illusion of unanimity and appropriateness of the lessons learned from the crisis, and perpetuates what made the crisis dangerous in the first place: the overconfidence that the leadership at the time had about both their knowledge and the sufficiency of that knowledge to allow successful management of a nuclear crisis.ĭuring the crisis, overconfidence on both sides of the Cold War divide led to bold moves which increased the nuclear danger. If we expect to learn how to survive future nuclear crises from the experience of 1962, we should acknowledge that the paradoxical effects of such memorialization are dangerous. It gives the impression that we have all learned what we needed to learn from it, while maintaining the possibility of divergent interpretations and lessons. Paradoxically, when an event reaches such iconic status, it can have a dangerous effect. For sure the crisis appears as a special event worth learning from. At a time when forgetting is a threat to global nuclear safety and security, this widespread memorialization is unduly reassuring. It even made it into a clever super-hero blockbuster, X-Men First Class in 2011. Visit the Official Changes page to see a list of official Defcon system changes.The so-called “Cuban missile crisis” is turning 52, but it is certainly not forgotten on the contrary, almost everyone seems to have an opinion on it. Click on one of the alerts below to find out what each Defcon Level color means and in what situations each of the alert levels are used for. News alerts for each region can be found on the Regional Alerts Pages.īelow is the list of the 5 Defcon levels in the official system and the color for each. Now that we know the meaning of the Defcon Level Warning System, what are the Defcon levels used for? The levels are used to show the Current Overall system status, but each Combatant Command region also uses these Defcon levels to show the current alert status of each Region. All five Defcon levels and their meanings are shown below.īecause the Official Defcon Levels are not released to the public from the United States Government usually until later, we give both official changes to the Official Defcon Levels, as well as Current Estimates based on open source intelligence analysis of the current geopolitical situation. What are all the Defcon Levels, and what do the levels mean? The five official Defcon levels are: Condition 1 - Cocked Pistol (color white), 2 Fast Pace (color red), 3 Round House (color yellow), 4 Double Take (color green), and 5 Fade Out (color blue). Defcon levels 1 through 4 mean an elevated condition status, and alert level 5 means a current state of peace or low levels of military readiness or alertness. Official Defcon levels range from a scale of alert level 1 (color white) to 5 (color blue).
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