The Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare, occurred on January 25, 1995 when a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway. The rocket carried scientific equipment to study the aurora borealis over Svalbard, and flew on a high northbound trajectory, which included an air corridor that stretches from Minuteman III nuclear missile silos in North Dakota all the way to Moscow, the capital city of Russia. The rocket eventually reached an altitude of , resembling a US Navy submarine-launched Trident missile. Fearing a high-altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, Russian nuclear forces went on high alert, and the "nuclear briefcase" (the Cheget) was taken to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who then had to decide whether to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States. Russian observers determined that there was no nuclear attack and no retaliation was ordered. Background The Norwegian rocket incident was a few minutes of post-Cold War nuclear tension that took place nearly four years after the end of the Cold War. While not as well known an incident as the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 (nor the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident, which was still classified at the time), the 1995 incident is considered to be one of the most severe incidents. The 1995 incident happened quickly, and occurred at a time where many Russians, especially in the military, were still very suspicious of the United States and NATO. In contrast, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had a much longer build-up. Detection As the Black Brant XII rocket gained altitude, it was detected by the Olenegorsk early-warning radar station in Murmansk Oblast. To the radar operators, the rocket appeared similar in speed and flight pattern to a US Navy submarine-launched Trident missile, leading the Russian military to initially misinterpret the rocket's trajectory as representing the precursor to a possible attack by missiles from submarines. EMP missile scenario One possibility was that the rocket had been a solitary missile with a radar-blocking electromagnetic pulse (EMP) payload launched from a Trident missile at sea in order to blind Russian radars in the first stage of a surprise attack. In this scenario, gamma rays from a high-altitude nuclear detonation would create a very high-intensity electromagnetic pulse that would confuse radars