Abstract
Future arms control treaties may place limits on the total number of warheads in the arsenals of weapon states, which would introduce qualitatively new verification objectives, including confirming numerical limits on declared nuclear warheads and confirming the authenticity of nuclear warheads prior to dismantlement. Meeting these objectives would require on-site inspections at new types of facilities, including warhead storage sites, which could put at risk highly sensitive information both related to military operations and warhead design. Weapon states may be reluctant to consider some of the anticipated procedures. As a way to address this challenge, in this paper, we examine the potential of verification approaches that emphasize non-intrusiveness from the outset. Relevant examples include innovative tagging approaches and hashed declarations to confirm the correctness of warhead declarations and novel types of inspection systems to confirm the authenticity of nuclear warheads, while satisfying the different and sometimes conflicting requirements by the host and the inspector. New international R&D efforts could usefully focus on non-intrusive technologies and approaches, which may show more promise for early demonstration and adoption. If demonstrated, such non-intrusive verification approaches could be particularly important for moving forward discussions about expanding the scope of current agreements and facilitating discussions with weapon states that have so far not been part of formal nuclear arms control agreements.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Allowing for bogus items to be counted may require a procedure at the authentication stage to confirm that they have been invalid all along; presenting an invalid item, for example, at the time of verified dismantlement, could raise concerns about non-compliance.
- 2.
Moreover, existing RFID technology has not been designed for security applications and carries the risk of being spoofed: “RFIDs are inventory devices, not security devices, and should not be used to make determinations about nuclear theft, diversion, tampering, or espionage” [10].
- 3.
It is also worth noting that a capability to demonstrate to an inspector the provenance of a nuclear warhead could ultimately provide sufficient confidence in its authenticity so that a dedicated authentication step (e.g. using radiation measurements combined with attribute or template methods) may be considered unnecessary.
- 4.
In principle, and in addition to nuclear radiation signatures, a fingerprint used for the template method can also include mechanical, thermal, electrical, or acoustical properties. These non-nuclear signatures cannot be sensitive to isotopics, however.
- 5.
Some efforts have been underway to determine which signatures could be declassified. Namely, “the United States is conducting a nuclear warhead modeling and measurement campaign to establish a comprehensive nuclear warhead and component signature set. The resulting data will support assessment of sensitive information that could be revealed as a result of future treaty verification activities, and will further guide future R&D in the areas of radiation detection and information protection” [8].
- 6.
Insertion can occur at “any stage during the design and manufacturing process, including the specification, design, verification and manufacturing stages” [19]. Recent research has examined (and demonstrated) the insertion of Trojans at the sub-transistor level, which is resistant to most detection techniques that are currently in use [20].
References
Garwin T (1980) Tagging Systems for Arms Control Verification. AAC-TR-10401/80, Analytical Assessment Corporation, Marina del Rey, California
Fetter S, Garwin T (1989) Using Tags to Monitor Numerical Limits in Arms Control Agreements. In: Blechman BM (ed) Technology and the Limitation of International Conflict, Washington, DC, pp 33–54
Fuller J (2010) Verification on the Road to Zero: Issues for Nuclear Warhead Dismantlement. Arms Control Today, December 2010
Ifft E (2014) Verification Lessons Learned from the INF, START I and New START Treaties. Paper presented at the 55th Annual INMM Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, 20–24 July 2014
Patton T, Podvig P, Schell P (2013) A New START Model for Transparency in Nuclear Disarmament. United National Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva
U.S. Department of State (2014) Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile, Factsheet, Washington, DC
Rhoades D, DeLand S (2011) Warhead Monitoring: Technical Challenges to Maintaining a Chain of Custody. Presented at the INMM Workshop on Preparing for Nuclear Arms Reductions Technical Transparency and Monitoring Challenges, Monterey, California, 4–5 May 2011
U.S. Department of Energy (2015) Joint U.S.-U.K. Report on Technical Cooperation for Arms Control, Washington, DC
United Nations (2015) Actions 5, 20 and 21 of the Action Plan of the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NPT/CONF.2015/38, 2015 NPT Review Conference, United Nations, New York, 1 May 2015. https://undocs.org/NPT/CONF.2015/38
Warner JS, Johnston RG (2010) Why RFID Tags Offer Poor Security. Paper presented at the 51st Annual INMM Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, 11–15 July 2010
MacArthur DW (2014) Warhead Confirmation: A Follow-on to New START. LA-UR-14-21945, Los Alamos, New Mexico
Easttom C (2016) Modern Cryptography: Applied Mathematics for Encryption and Information Security. McGraw Hill, New York
National Academy of Sciences (2005) Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities, Washington, DC
Jordan SE (1991) Buddy Tag’s Motion Sensing and Analysis Subsystem. Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Yan J, Glaser A (2014) Nuclear Warhead Verification: A Review of Attribute and Template Systems. Science & Global Security, 23(3):157–170
United Kingdom – Norway Initiative (2015) Trust in Verification Technology: A Case Study Using the UK-Norway Information Barrier. Non-Paper, United Nations, New York
Philippe S, Barak B, Glaser A (2015) Designing Protocols for Nuclear Warhead Verification. Paper presented at the 56th Annual INMM Meeting, Indian Wells, California, 12–16 July 2015
Tolk K (2015) Authentication in Arms Control. Paper presented at the 56th Annual INMM Meeting, Indian Wells, California, 12–16 July 2015
Beaumont M, Bradley Hopkins B, Tristan Newby T (2011) Hardware Trojans: Prevention, Detection, and Countermeasures (A Literature Review). DSTO-TN-1012, Department of Defence, Australian Government
Becker GT, Regazzoni F, Paar C, Burleson WP (2013) Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans. In: Bertoni G, Coron J-S (eds), Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2013), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8086, Springer, Heidelberg, pp 197–214
Fisch B, Freund D, Naor M (2014) Physical Zero-Knowledge Proofs of Physical Properties. In: Garay JA and Gennaro R (eds), Advances in Cryptology (CRYPTO 2014), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8617, Springer, Heidelberg, pp 313–336
Glaser A, Barak B, Goldston RJ (2014) A Zero-knowledge Protocol for Nuclear Warhead Verification, Nature 510:497–502
Philippe S, Barak B, Kütt M, Goldston RJ, Glaser A (2020) Optimum Testing Strategies for Confirming the Authenticity of Nuclear Weapons (in preparation)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Glaser, A., Jie, Y. (2020). Minimally Intrusive Approaches to Nuclear Warhead Verification. In: Niemeyer, I., Dreicer, M., Stein, G. (eds) Nuclear Non-proliferation and Arms Control Verification. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29537-0_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29537-0_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-29536-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-29537-0
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)