Nuclear threatsU.S. Should Make Monitoring and Detecting Nuclear Threats a Higher National Priority

To address enduring and evolving nuclear threats, the U.S. needs a higher prioritized and more integrated program for monitoring, detecting, and verifying nuclear test explosions, nuclear weapon stockpiles, and the production of fissile material, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Monitoring, detection, and verification (MDV) challenges around the world are increasing, as many nations actively modernize their nuclear weapon arsenals and as technology advances and cross-border illicit networks make proliferation harder to detect, the report says.

For example, U.S. national security policy documents note that Russia and China continue to develop advanced nuclear weapon systems, and reports indicate that North Korea is refining and improving its nuclear weapons.

In addition, nuclear energy programs — including enrichment and reprocessing capabilities — are being pursued by states with unclear commitments to nonproliferation. Nuclear weapons technology and expertise are widely available and easier to disseminate, and technology advancements may create new pathways to nuclear weapons.

To meet these and other challenges, MDV of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material must be a higher national priority, with more support and attention than it currently receives, the report says. New MDV tools and capabilities are necessary to meet future national security goals in arms control and proliferation detection.

The U.S. government’s MDV mission is distributed across a number of federal agencies and departments, which demands a high level of integration and coordination, the report says. The government should ensure an enduring interagency process that can regularly evaluate and update current and future proliferation and arms-control challenges, assess the adequacy of current organization and capabilities to address these challenges, and develop strategic guidance for R&D planning.

In addition, meeting some of the most important challenges related to MDV will require long-range vision, planning, and investments, the report says. To get advice on future priorities related to R&D on nonproliferation and arms control MDV, the National Security Council should establish an external advisory board composed of policy, R&D, and operations experts who collectively have familiarity with the government agencies, as well as the national laboratories, academic institutions, and industry involved in MDV.

The report also urges the U.S. government’s MDV enterprise to take steps to increase innovation in support of MDV objectives, address persistent challenges in transitioning R&D to operational systems and tools, and sustain expertise related to MDV in light of an aging workforce and cyclic national attention.

The report identifies technical capabilities that should be expanded and prioritized for future R&D — for example, applying advanced data-analytic capabilities and open-source data to the mission space, improving environmental sampling for monitoring undeclared nuclear activity, and enhancing the ability to monitor and detect early capability development that could be a potential proliferation threat.

The report is the first of two reports by the study committee. In a future report, the committee will address additional current and needed MDV capabilities and assess the R&D priorities of the MDV enterprise.