monitoring

UNCLASSIFIED
DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
counter those improvements. It used a wide range of U.S. national, theater, and tactical
monitoring means, from both the Army and Air Force, as well as similar Allied means where
appropriate. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense
Nuclear Agency (DNA) were major players in developing new monitoring capabilities. Exercises
using NATO forces were used to elicit responses in later WP exercises that could be observed by
Shockwave assets. The effort was led by successive SACEURs, with integration at both Supreme
Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) and United States European Command (EUCOM)
headquarters. Over the 7‐8 years it was run, Shockwave was highly successful. In fact, it serves
as a premier example of how persistent, comprehensive monitoring for threat‐assessment
purposes can pay off.
Shockwave involved development and use of persistent (for its time), relatively wide‐area (for
its time), aircraft‐based, multi‐sensor, monitoring systems, combined with many other
approaches to gaining understanding. There is a direct evolutionary path from those systems to
the kinds of systems used, recently and currently, for more‐persistent, wider‐area monitoring
to suppress the IED threat in Iraq and Afghanistan. One such recent system was ODIN. ODINlike
systems, in turn, could be adapted and extended for a future, Shockwave‐like effort for
monitoring dual‐capable systems (as well as for other purposes, including wide‐area search for
“loose nukes”). Integrated with such systems could be a wide range of other things including
covert unattended ground sensors, covert tagging, and crowd‐sourcing for gaining patterns‐oflife
information. The ODIN concept has been conceptually adapted for nuclear monitoring; the
operational concept demands close access for detection consistent with the discussion on
radiation detection in Chapter 5.
We have focused here on monitoring of dual‐capable systems both because they are relevant in
their own right, for future treaties and for threat assessment, and because other M&V
problems share aspects of the DC/TNF M&V problem. For example:
• Monitoring the IAEA Additional Protocol, which would allow access to undeclared
nuclear facilities, is similar to the problem of finding undeclared warheads;
• Awareness of the early stages of proliferation and monitoring weapon production are
similar to understanding the dual‐capable weapon system development and
deployment life cycle.
6.4. Use of the Testing Capability for the TNF‐DC Problem
The ODIN system of systems became effective for IED suppression because its users were
forced to learn from experience in the real world, including from many initial failures where
people died. Nuclear monitoring systems for both treaty‐monitoring and threat‐assessment will
not have the same plethora of daily, high‐stakes, real‐world events from which to learn. An
essential part of developing and iterating these systems toward success must be providing
frequent learning experiences using the test‐bed approach we discussed above. We close by
returning to that subject.
DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 6: Experiment to Iterate and Adapt: National Testing Capability | 73
Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies
UNCLASSIFIED