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UNCLASSIFIED DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE • There is little chance of a deployed technical solution for longer range (>100 m) detection of SNM in the next 10 years. 5.4. Sensing: Post Event The Task Force was originally asked to look into capabilities for nuclear forensics but decided not to pursue the topic, with one exception, because of a focused National Academies committee which was completing its work during the course of this study. 30 The one exception was an assessment of the USAEDS, operated by the Air Force since the late 1940s. The full system, comprised of a global satellite surveillance constellation and a seismic‐hydroacoustic network, coupled to the International (seismic) Monitoring System, also includes an airborne sampling system that is vectored to the area of a suspected explosion to collect radioactive debris. 31 The samples are returned to ground laboratories for detailed radiochemical analysis. The analysis can take days to weeks. 5.5. Sensing: Additional Modalities Chapter 3 introduced the need for a significantly expanded monitoring architecture to address the challenges of both horizontal and vertical proliferation. The task force highlights here some of the particular sensing capabilities that should be assessed and/or integrated into the overall architecture. 5.5.1. The “INTs” Many of the various intelligence collection capabilities (HUMINT, IMINT, MASINT, OSINT, SIGINT, etc.) have historically played a strong role in the detection and assessment of larger nuclear programs. Applications outside the nuclear proliferation domain in which signal‐toclutter is extremely small have been significantly improved, especially from an exploitation standpoint, during the last decade of warfighting. Crossing back into the nuclear realm and focusing on small, easily hidden or nascent programs will be important to meet the monitoring challenges identified in this report. 5.5.2. Scientific and Commercial Imagery A major scientific and economic trend exploitable for increasing the capacity and persistence of monitoring coverage worldwide is the spread of satellite sensing capability throughout the world and into the commercial sector. Governments and nongovernmental organizations in over 50 countries now operate nearly 1,000 active satellites in earth orbit. Two hundred of those satellites are engaged in earth observation. This collection of satellites has several attributes of potential utility to monitoring: 30 “Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk,” A. Carnesale (committee chair), National Research Council, 2010. 31 The airborne component of the system was deployed and proved invaluable in the aftermath of the Fukishima nuclear reactor disaster. DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 5: Improve the Tools: Access, Sense, Assess | 58 Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies UNCLASSIFIED
UNCLASSIFIED DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE • Observation of earth from satellites is no longer just within the purview of compartmented defense and intelligence programs. Information is collected by a growing number of states and companies and shared widely for academic and commercial purposes. This makes information from space, which is relevant to arms control monitoring and proliferation concerns, more easily shareable and accepted in international fora. • International monitoring bodies themselves are increasingly engaged in the use of imagery from space. The IAEA, for example, has established a Satellite Imagery Analysis Unit. IAEA presentations note that commercial satellite imagery is now routinely used as an integral part of the safeguards system by which IAEA seeks to monitor independently the correctness and completeness of the declarations made by states about their nuclear materials and activities. • There is a growing body of academic and non‐governmental organization (NGO) literature that uses imagery from commercial or declassified sources to analyze activities or installations of proliferation concern. This literature identifies methodologies for the employment of information from satellite systems to improve monitoring regimes and has provided crowd‐sourcing techniques for the detection of activities and places of monitoring concern. These methodologies employ readily available visualization tools and historical imagery available from websites such as Google Earth. Some observers, with some hyperbole, have referred to these techniques as “a new era in global transparency.” • Despite the funding vagaries of the commercial satellite industry, the number of commercial remote sensing platforms seems likely to grow. This growth will be accelerated by increases in hosted payloads, in cube‐ and mini‐sats, and in new business enterprises offering innovative lift for payloads, including suborbital spaceplanes. This proliferation of commercial remote sensing satellites does have some limitations and drawbacks: • The increase in the volume of data and the reports of nongovernmental entities analyzing commercial imagery may introduce additional noise into U.S. and international monitoring systems. Some experts are concerned that bad data and bad analysis could increasingly tarnish or mask more reliable data. Moreover, these experts are concerned that such data and analysis would divert government professionals from more important tasks in the quest to corroborate or refute commercially derived claims. • The greater availability and dissemination of data will constrain the ability of the United States to keep its options open in dealing with potential violations of international agreements or other threatening behavior. The distinction between the gathering of information through monitoring and the making of political judgments in the verification process will erode, and raw information gathered by commercial or international sources may become matters of public discourse that could hamper quiet resolution of noncompliant or ambiguous activities more difficult. DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 5: Improve the Tools: Access, Sense, Assess | 59 Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies UNCLASSIFIED
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