Editing Nuclear warfare (section)

===1970s===
Israel responded to the Arab [[Yom Kippur War]] attack on 6 October 1973 by assembling 13 nuclear weapons in a tunnel under the [[Negev desert]] when Syrian tanks were sweeping in across the [[Golan Heights]]. On 8 October 1973, Israeli Prime Minister [[Golda Meir]] authorized Defense Minister [[Moshe Dayan]] to activate the 13 Israeli nuclear warheads and distribute them to [[Israeli air force]] units, with the intent that they be used if Israel began to be overrun.<ref>Seymour M. Hersh, ''The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy'' (Random House, 1991) p.&nbsp;225.</ref>

On 24 October 1973, as US President [[Richard Nixon]] was preoccupied with the [[Watergate scandal]], Henry Kissinger ordered a [[DEFCON]]-3 alert{{dubious|date=August 2021}} preparing American B-52 nuclear bombers for war. Intelligence reports indicated that the USSR was preparing to defend Egypt in its [[Yom Kippur War]] with Israel. It had become apparent that if Israel had dropped nuclear weapons on Egypt or Syria, as it prepared to do, then the USSR would have retaliated against Israel, with the US then committed to providing Israeli assistance, possibly escalating to a general nuclear war.<ref name="ReferenceB">Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War, Bernard Brodie</ref>

By the late 1970s, people in both the [[United States]] and the [[Soviet Union]], along with the rest of the world, had been living with the concept of [[mutual assured destruction]] (MAD) for about a decade, and it became deeply ingrained into the psyche and popular culture of those countries.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The threats of nuclear warfare as depicted in the popular culture of the 1960s {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/video/186541/overview-atomic-bomb-Strangelove-threat-warfare-missile |access-date=2024-06-14 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>

On May 18, 1974, [[India]] conducted its first nuclear test in the [[Pokhran]] test range. The name of the operation was [[Smiling Buddha]], and India termed the test as a "[[peaceful nuclear explosion]]."

The Soviet [[Duga radar|Duga]] early warning [[over-the-horizon radar]] system was made operational in 1976. The extremely powerful radio transmissions needed for such a system led to much disruption of civilian shortwave broadcasts, earning it the nickname "[[Russian Woodpecker]]".

The idea that any nuclear conflict would eventually escalate was a challenge for military strategists. This challenge was particularly severe for the United States and its [[NATO]] allies. It was believed (until the 1970s) that a Soviet tank offensive into Western Europe would quickly overwhelm NATO conventional forces, leading to the necessity of the West escalating to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, one of which was the [[W-70]].

This strategy had one major (and possibly critical) flaw, which was soon realized by military analysts but highly underplayed by the U.S. military: conventional [[NATO]] forces in the European theatre of war were far outnumbered by similar Soviet and [[Warsaw Pact]] forces, and it was assumed that in case of a major Soviet attack (commonly envisioned as the "Red tanks rolling towards the [[North Sea]]" scenario) that NATO—in the face of quick conventional defeat—would soon have no other choice but to resort to tactical nuclear strikes against these forces. Most analysts agreed that once the first nuclear exchange had occurred, escalation to global nuclear war would likely become inevitable. The [[Warsaw Pact]]'s vision of an atomic war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces was simulated in the top-secret exercise [[Seven Days to the River Rhine]] in 1979. The British government exercised their vision of a Soviet nuclear attack with [[Square Leg]] in early 1980.

Large hardened nuclear [[weapon storage area]]s were built across European countries in anticipation of local US and European forces falling back as the conventional NATO defense from the Soviet Union, named [[REFORGER]], was believed to only be capable of stalling the Soviets for a short time.