Talk:Moscow–Washington hotline

Assessed by microchip08 19:28, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Combine Red telephone
I think Red telephone should be merged into this article. It has mostly redundant info, but is not formatted as well. --Eyaw Nayr 02:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Somebody thought the same over there, I've put the proper tag on this page now. &mdash; RevRagnarok  Talk Contrib 14:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree. It should be merged. Superzohar [[Image:Star*.svg|13px]] Talk 11:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. GlassFET 20:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)


 * From personal observation, there are quite a few color-coded military telephone. Red was most associated with the SAC primary alerting system, which was operational, not at the Presidential level. NORAD's warning telephone for the President and others were gold.


 * For that matter, before the STU-III and other modern encryptors, most secure phones were gray, except that CIA's was green. AUTOVON unclassified phones were beige.  Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 08:40, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Still Exists?
Is this line still exist after the end of USSR ? Or is ther still is a line bewten USA & Russia ?
 * Yes, the line is still in use today, as a method of communication between Russia and the US. --Eyaw Nayr 17:07, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It still exists, and it's not called "red phone," it's called "MOLINK". Trust me. 69.140.253.215 (talk) 14:47, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Jimmy Carter
Did Jimmy Carter use the red telephone to upbraid Breshznev over the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.50.216 (talk) 16:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Probably not, as the red telephone is a myth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.78.164.93 (talk) 06:09, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Reference 9
From the context of the text this reference appears to be an example of a campaign advert by Senator Clinton in which she references the 'Red Telephone'. This is only partially correct. The majority of the video is a highly partisan commentary on Senator Clinton's candidacy for president. In my opinion this is quite detrimental to the article as a whole.

Sorry if I've put this in the wrong place or in the wrong way, but I'm a bear of very little brain, and complicated editing protocols bother me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.45.76.114 (talk) 19:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Was the phone actually red?
If so, the article never directly says that. If not, how did it get the name of "red phone?" –69.23.37.87 (talk) 03:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Probably because it connected the US to the "Reds". That's speculation.24.138.72.131 (talk) 17:16, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The phone was not red? It was in the 1966 movie, "Batman."John Paul Parks (talk) 04:21, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Mistake of RED phone
The article is all but well researched. The red phone has NOTING to do with the Washington-Moscow hotline. In fact, the writers of wiki article completely misunderstand the concept of RED phone. I am tired of correcting people's mistakes on this and many other "previously classified" stuff. It would be nice if one of you did a good research en got rid of the nonsens in this article.

In some way, I understand the mistakes, as even many politicians (who also don't know a zip about cryptography, the military or communications security) also made these mistakes about the hotline and red phones, fed by hollywood to the gullible movie viewers. Nevertheless, it's not an excuse for publishing errors in Wikipedia. Who says it's a red phone??? Who says a phone was added in 1971??? Ik know, even governments officials and journalists (and Hollywood) had it wrong, but such people are not really good sources, are they?. Check your sources first!

Below some better recourses.

Cryptomachines

More about "red" phones and making sens of the colors

Dirk (talk) 10:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Cipher Machines & Cryptology


 * Does anyone know what the picture of the red telephone actually is? 208.65.73.105 (talk) 17:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The red phone in the picture was most likely used as part of the Defense Red Switch Network, linking the president, the secretary of defense and all the mayor command centers. So not for international, but for internal use, that is the chain of command for the US defense system. P2Peter (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I now did a major review of this article, correcting the mistake of the red telephone and adding some info about the newer technology which was/is used for the hotline. Also added some new weblinks and other sources. P2Peter (talk) 02:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Malfunctions
Lloyd Jeff Dumas apparently mentions in his book that this line has malfunctioned several times. This would be interesting to add to the article, if documented. -- Beland (talk) 03:11, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that's interesting! I will try to find a source. P2Peter (talk) 07:13, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments by officials asking for new communication channels
I thought about adding this content:

In 2015 European Leadership Network (ELN) chair and former British defense minister Des Browne states that there's a "need to find a mechanism in which we can talk at the highest level". Brown, former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and former US Senator and veteran of international disarmament policy Sam Nunn jointly recommend "that reliable communication channels exist in the event of serious incidents". Head of NATO Allied Command Operations in Europe Philip Breedlove calls for a new "red telephone".

However doesn't the hotline still exist? Are they speaking about an additional channel? If so, an EU-Russia / Brussels-Moscow hotline?

--Fixuture (talk) 03:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)