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UNCLASSIFIED DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 6.3. Monitoring Dual‐Capable Nuclear Forces, Including Warhead Counting for Arms Control Treaties Monitoring dual‐capable (nuclear and conventional) systems is of interest in its own right, but it also epitomizes other monitoring problems. It illustrates the synergies among the four elements of the Task Force’s basic 2x2 matrix of Figure 1‐2, which encompasses the full scope of the monitoring regime; i.e., monitoring for the purpose of treaty‐compliance and monitoring for threat assessment, within the context of both negotiated and/or cooperative monitoring agreements and non‐negotiated/unilateral monitoring. All nations that have nuclear weapons, except for the UK, have dual‐capable (DC) weapons, and many of these nations, including recent proliferators, have only dual‐capable nuclear systems. It is likely that most potential future proliferators (Iran, etc.) will use dual‐capable platforms for their initial, if not longer term, nuclear capability. There is a wide range of dual‐capable weapon‐system types: • Air forces: gravity bombs, air‐launched cruise missiles, air‐to‐air missiles, defense suppression missiles. • Ground forces: anti‐armor infantry weapons, tube artillery, surface‐to‐surface missiles, air defense missiles, demolition munitions; some are dual‐role (e.g., surface‐to‐air and surface‐to‐surface). • Naval forces: surface‐to‐surface missiles, air defense missiles, ASW weapons, torpedoes • Special forces weapons We have also seen that some nuclear warheads may be dual‐use (i.e., strategic and TNF), adaptable both ways. It is important to take into account that most proliferators will rely on “hiddenness” and uncertainty in general, for their nuclear systems survivability. The survivability provided by hiddenness and uncertainty tends to enhance crisis stability but exacerbates the difficulty of monitoring and verification for both arms control and threat assessment. The net effect may be that the risk of miscalculation by current or potential future adversaries increases, and overall strategic stability over the long term decreases. How transparency, certainty and uncertainty, and stability interact, for good or ill, is an important issue that deserves more systematic thought than it has received to date. Dual capability is an integral part of this question, because of the uncertainty about whether any given delivery platform may be armed with, or destined to be armed with, a nuclear weapon. To be effective, monitoring of dual‐capable forces must cover the full spectrum of activities: design, production, storage, and deployment; during both peacetime and crisis/war operations; for both nuclear warheads and DC systems. Understanding this complete set of activities––i.e., the “pattern of life” for dual capable systems––illuminates each individual part, including parts DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 6: Experiment to Iterate and Adapt: National Testing Capability | 70 Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies UNCLASSIFIED
UNCLASSIFIED DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE that may be relevant to treaties, but also paints a much broader picture of nuclear capability. An increasingly serious problem is that U.S. de‐emphasis of dual‐capable systems narrows our frame of reference for monitoring and verification of others. The result is a limited range of opportunities to test monitoring systems against our own dual‐capable systems, and the roster of people who understand the possible patterns of life of DC systems, based on their own experience with them, is shrinking rapidly. It is a central theme of this report that there are synergies that should be amplified and exploited between monitoring for arms control purposes and for threat assessment, and between negotiated/cooperative monitoring and monitoring means that are not negotiated and not explicitly cooperative. These synergies are illustrated, in more specific terms, in the case of monitoring for dual‐capable systems, in Figure 6‐. Figure 6‐1 Dual Capable (DC) Theater Nuclear Forces (TNF) ‐ An Example to Illustrate Synergies in our Approach One can observe that: • Knowledge of warhead inventories gained from treaty monitoring contributes to threat assessment. Verified or even suspected non‐compliance with treaty limits would represent a form of strategic warning in the threat assessment context. • The objective of threat assessment is to know everything relevant about the force structure, order of battle, development life‐cycle and operational patterns of life in peace, crisis, and war, for both warheads and systems. Much of this knowledge would DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 6: Experiment to Iterate and Adapt: National Testing Capability | 71 Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies UNCLASSIFIED
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