monitoring

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DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
standup of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) at DoD in the early 1980s. The
POET was populated by successive generations of some of the top talent from the Federally
Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and national laboratories; individuals
were independent of specific acquisition programs. The POET reported directly to
the SDIO director and had sufficient influence to establish the baseline threat assessment
and balanced architecture options, as well as more specific assessments of proposed
technical capabilities.
Adapting the POET model into an interagency environment will require some variant of either a
lead agency with accountability to partnering agencies (e.g., a “board of directors”), or
governance by a special interagency board, chaired by the appropriate lead in the NSS or
selected on a rotating basis among the participating agencies. The Task Force realizes that this
approach is highly unusual, but also believes that other options fall short given the complexity
of the problem, the need to think through new and innovative solutions, and the number of
agencies and interfaces that are needed to make progress.
4.7. Recommendations: Addressing the Problem Whole
As the lead agencies, State/ASD/AVC, DoD/ASD/NCB, DOE/NNSA and IC/NCPC should create the
processes and oversee the following steps:
• Establish the “White Team” whose charter is to characterize the comprehensive
Monitoring and Verification Framework, relating threat events and actions to
monitoring requirements, both cooperative and unilateral.
o The White Team should be assigned to a “home” agency, but supported and
governed by an interagency “board” whose members have sufficient authority to
influence any needed changes in strategy and program directions at their
home agencies.
• Ensure a common understanding among agency leads for addressing all aspects of the
framework, including policy, diplomacy, operations, and RDT&E.
o It is critical that those agencies involved in implementing M&V capabilities
maintain a high degree of unanimity on how M&V problems and challenges are
characterized, and how they will be addressed in order for the White Team to be
both effective and sustainable. The adoption of common frameworks (such as
that proposed in this chapter and report) can contribute to developing a
common understanding of national strategy, goals, and pathways to
accomplishing those goals.
The foundation established with the two steps above leads to the following implementation
steps, again under the charge of the leading agencies:
DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 4: Address the Problem | 50
Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies
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