FOIA: Perspectives on New Nuclear Monitoring Challenges

MONITORING_CHALLENGES.pdf
Perspectives on New Nuclear Monitoring Challenges
The report discusses irregular, traditional, catastropic and disruptive threats from various modern weapons including nuclear, biological, cyber and direct energy.
Document date: 2005-06-06
Department: Institute for Defense Analysis, Alexandria, VA.
Author: Rob Mahoney
Document type: report
pages: 38


Archivist's Notes: Good quality document. Appears to be a copy of a powerpoint presentation. Form 298 document page.

This document has been released in June 2005

Title: Perspectives on New Nuclear Monitoring Challenges by Rob Mahoney

This powerpoint slideshow has been presented to the commission on seismology and geodynamics.

The Topics :

What are the 21st century nuclear threats?
What are the 21st century nuclear monitoring challenges?
What are the implications for seismology and geodynamics?
research to improve nuclear monitoring capabilities?

This document gives an overview of the Nuclear Threats and a little history into the changed reality that we are facing with having a shift from the cold war (Soviet Union, China) to the ‘enemy within” (terrorists)

PDF page:13 document page 9:
During the cold war, priority was given to threats posed by the Soviet Union.
Current expectations are that a cold war-like strategic confrontation with a nuclear peer adversary is unlikely in the near future. It is also commonly assumed that the United States has conventional superiority and would prevail in the event of a
major conventional war. One rationale for maintaining some of the capabilities developed to counter the traditional nuclear and large conventional war threats is that they make it difficult for potential adversaries to become peer adversaries, as would not be the
case, for example, if the United States had a much smaller nuclear posture.

PDF page 11 document page 7:
The United States has faced nuclear threats for a half-century. These threats have changed, necessitating new approaches for nuclear monitoring. The slides that follow outline the evolution of nuclear threats within each of the four types
of strategic challenges.




Interesting on PDF page 10 document page 6 included ‘civil war’ next to terrorism.

My notes about the 'civil war':
Can we conclude that there will be a satellite monitoring system in place for the all citizens? Hello !!! This document is about nuclear threats. Last time I looked in the shops I didn’t notice any ‘dirty bombs’ for sale….



The last pages of the show uncover:
The Potential Implications for Seismology and
Geodynamics Research

This slide show has a ‘faint’ connection to the Vela Incident therefore links to some of the other FOIA Documents:
FOIA: MIT's semi-annual technical report on seismic data center progress
FOIA: Defense Technical Intelligence Report for the 22 Sep 1979 Vela Satellite event
FOIA: Sandia Laboratories report on the Sep 22, 1979 Vela satellite event - Alert 747
FOIA: Detection of Regional Seismic Events using a Small Broadband Array



[edit on 30-11-2007 by frozen_snowman]

This document is a power point presentation given by the Institute for Defense Analysis for the Commission on Seismology and Geodynamics on New Nuclear Monitoring Challenges. Only the visual aids are recorded in this document. I’m sure there was also more information given by a speaker.

The report covered past, current, and new nuclear threats for the 21st century, and how the current capabilities were developed mainly to deal with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The challenges were put into four groups.

1) Traditional Threat
This included the Soviet Union and China, but they are less of a threat now than they were during the Cold War.

2) Irregular Threat
This involves a terrorist group such as al-Qaeda getting access to an unsecured nuclear bomb.

3) Catastrophic Threat
This threat includes other nations as having nuclear programs, and the difficulties monitoring proliferation.

4) Disruptive Threat
Would involve the Electromagnetic Pulse or EMP from a nuclear blast as a cyber attack or to cause damage to electronic dependant defenses.

The current monitoring involves detecting above ground explosions and monitoring known underground test sights, but may not be sufficient for low yield or hydronuclear testing. The US definition of hydronuclear testing means there is no nuclear yield, only the explosives themselves can be tested, but other countries may interpret the definition differently. There is also a possibility that pre-tested designs are used that don’t require nuclear tests.

The recommendations for Seismology and Geodynamics Research were:

To maintain, upgrade and modernize existing monitoring.
Research capabilities for monitoring low yield testing.
Have additional sensors that can be networked.
Be able to collect large amounts of data from the network.
Be able to manage large databases.