Nuclear Proliferation and Arms Control Monitoring, Detection, and Verification: A National Security Priority: Interim Report (2021)
Chapter: Appendix C: Summary of the Defense Science Board Task Force Report: Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technologies
Appendix C
Summary of the Defense Science Board Task Force Report: Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technologies
The DSB Task Force concluded that closing the global gaps in monitoring capabilities would require a higher level of commitment and sustainment and should be a national priority.
The Task Force assessed that existing technologies and processes, designed for current treaty verification and inspections, would be inadequate to support future monitoring needs. U.S. monitoring capabilities must involve the collection and exploitation of a wide range of secondary signatures to allow more complete and integrated information on nations’ overall nuclear postures (civil and military), the networks among them and other players, not just treaty compliance.
Involving both cooperative and unilateral actions, a paradigm shift was called for that would start with creating a national strategy and implementation plan supported by an interagency planning and assessment team chartered to identify needed capabilities that play against many scenarios, particularly to focus on early detection of proliferation. Such a team (possibly called a “White Team”) would call upon U.S. government and U.S. national laboratory advisors, as well as technical experts, for their expertise and vision. The Task Force recommended that a revamped monitoring framework should
- plan for a long period of building the political and technical groundwork for the next major steps, whether cooperative or unilateral;
- specifically expand cooperative agreements;
- adopt/adapt new tools for monitoring (e.g., open and commercial sources, persistent surveillance from conventional war-fighting, “big data” analysis) across the intelligence community, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy; and
- develop and integrate technical capabilities with concepts of operations for effective implementation.
The process would not be a one-time re-alignment but rather require a sustained effort with continuous experimentation to test assumptions, capabilities, and approaches, and stay ahead of emerging challenges.
