factors combined to make the Able Archer 83 test an incredibly stressful and dangerous time. Able Archer was a standard military exercise that was performed annually by the United States. Unfortunately, in 1983, the aforementioned factors all came into play at the wrong time, and Soviet nuclear threat perceptions were at a critical level. While the United States Chiefs of Staff remained largely indifferent to this Soviet perception, the exercise was nonetheless "toned down" in order to assuage fears of impending WWIII. President Reagan and Vice President Bush were removed from participating in the exercise, however, it still remained one of the most realistic exercises to date, with a complete simulation of NATO forces going to DEFCON 1. The Soviet leadership's suspicion of Able Archer 83 as an attempt at a surprise nuclear attack masquerading as an exercise grew with intelligence collections of United States message traffic which was "unusual" in its message formats and communications procedures. The unusual message procedures led Soviet leadership to believe that Able Archer may not be an exercise at all. This was coupled with a "too literal" interpretation of the scenario, whereby NATO forces were perceived by the Soviets to be at DEFCON 1. In actuality, the NATO forces were never at DEFCON 1, it was all simulated, however Soviet leadership still mistook the exercise for a real event. RYAN Project VRYAN, or RYAN as it is more commonly known, is the Russian acronym for surprise nuclear attack. It was the largest Soviet intelligence-gathering program ever mounted in peacetime. The objective of RYAN was to monitor the United States and its NATO allies for any indicator whatsoever of an impending nuclear first strike. Project RYAN had the highest priority over any other intelligence-gathering initiative in the Soviet Union at the time, including any currently being undertaken by the KGB or the GRU. There were hundreds of indicators that were monitored by Project RYAN, including the United States economy. More specifically, any large-scale purchase of gold by the United States might indicate an impending nuclear apocalypse. Traditional Soviet doctrine called for a first strike in order to make a nuclear war technically winnable. The Soviets kept most of their missiles in silos located throughout the country, whereas the United States had the majority of their warheads deployed on submarines. This fact contributed to the Soviet Union's increasing paranoia towards the United States, and more specifically,