Arms Control Verification Research Articles

A secure measurement unit for an inspection system used in nuclear arms-control verification

Verification of arms control treaties may require information barriers to protect sensitive data acquired during the verification process. These information barriers are commonly implemented in software, but must store and operate on data that are vulnerable to attack and tampering. We present a new Secure Measurement Unit based on a modified pipeline SAR ADC architecture. The idea is to move the information barrier back into the digitization process so that prohibited data is never created. A prototype 65 nm CMOS Secure Measurement Unit (SMU) was tested using U-235, U-238, Co-60, Cs-137 and Am-241 sources. The prototype accurately digitized allowable signals while being immune to side-channel attacks on signals within preset forbidden regions.

Stabilization of Particle Discrimination Efficiencies for Neutron Spectrum Unfolding With Organic Scintillators

The literature discussing pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) in organic scintillators dates back several decades. However, little has been written about PSD techniques that are optimized for neutron spectrum unfolding. Variation in $n$ - $\gamma $ misclassification rates and in $\gamma /n$ ratio of incident fields can distort the neutron pulse-height response of scintillators and these distortions can in turn cause large errors in unfolded spectra. New applications in arms-control verification call for detection of lower-energy neutrons, for which PSD is particularly problematic. In this article, we propose techniques for removing distortions on pulse-height response that result from the merging of PSD distributions in the low-pulse-height region. These techniques take advantage of the repeatable shapes of PSD distributions that are governed by the counting statistics of scintillation-photon populations. We validate the proposed techniques using accelerator-based time-of-flight measurements and then demonstrate them by unfolding the Watt spectrum from measurement with a 252Cf neutron source.

Canada's Functional Isolationism

HELPING TO CONTAIN AND TO REVERSE THE PROCESS OF 'HORIZONTAL' proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is the most important security challenge facing Canada and the world community. Twenty-first century international security relations should comprise four elements: international security community-building through redistributive assistance; and the widespread inhibition and elimination of military capabilities for aggressive warfare under an ever-widening regime of verified self-restraint; ever more reliable arms control and disarmament verification that leads quickly towards disassembled 'virtual' nuclear arsenals; and, finally broadly collaborative, collective security enforcement of the world's emerging anti-WMD norms.The threat of WMD can be tamed only through co-operative international measures. A closer, more intimate security relationship with the United States is inescapable - but that alone may deter responsible, out-ward-looking military reform in Ottawa. A Canadian retreat into hemispheric isolation militarily would only support those conservative forces in the United States who argue for American strategic disengagement from the world's troubles. Deciding to try to do something useful and responsible about proliferation and the rising risk of the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons would be a large and innovative step for any Canadian government. It would require farsighted political leadership able to develop a national consensus on political and strategic objectives. Clear goals for stability enhancement would have to be related to plausible and collectively affordable foreign aid and military capability. The temptation to yield to domestic political inertia and short-term economic self-interest is powerful. Without skilled, strategically sensitive leadership to explain how an active Canadian role might help to achieve radically improved international security, public support for military spending will remain low.(f.1)Canada's population is half that of Britain, France, or Italy, and more than one and one-half that of Australia. It is almost three times that of Belgium, and more than 20 per cent larger than that of the four Scandinavian countries combined. In 1996 Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) was still larger than China's and India's and over half the size of faltering Russia's. Per-capita income is among the highest in the world. Thus, an easily accessible tax base has long been available for spending much more on international security than recent governments have been willing to contemplate. Negotiating the landmines ban, discouraging trade in small arms, promoting the United Nations arms register are all worthwhile, popular activities that polish the national self-image. But they should all be supplements to, not substitutes for, a proportionately equitable commitment of resources to the management and prevention of international conflict - and thus the containment of the WMD threat.Future American governments will not 'police the world' alone. For almost fifty years the Soviet threat compelled disproportionate military expenditures and sacrifice by the United States. That world is gone. Only by enmeshing the capabilities of the United States and other leading powers in a co-operative security management regime where the burdens are widely shared does the world community have any plausible hope of avoiding warfare involving nuclear or other WMD.Canadian international security policy does not require much innovation to justify force expansion and improvement. Over the past decade Ottawa helped pioneer the notion of co-operative security that involves substituting multilateral security dialogue, confidence-building measures, regional security co-operation, defence policy transparency, and so forth for traditional approaches based on narrow conceptions of national self-interest. By promoting alternatives to security through unilateral military build-up, co-operative security offered the hope of ameliorating or even ending the classic 'security dilemma' (wherein the efforts of individual states to improve their military security threatened neighbouring states, thereby triggering arms races, mutual suspicion, and often conflict). …

Dayton arms control: Creating a model for the future

One of the key elements of the Dayton Peace Accord on the former Yugoslavia is its arms control element, for which arms control agencies of the OSCE nations have been assisting to achieve the balanced and stable defence forces necessary to maintain a difficult peace. The organisation, methods and working practices that have evolved in this task are likely to be used again in future regional conflicts, so it is important that these are critically reviewed and learned from. As a result of the end of the first phase reductions, Major Philip Schofield here writes from the OSCE Arms Control Verification Office explaining how the process works in practice, the participants and the agencies involved and the inspections, reductions and analysis issues. Now in the second phase, Major Schofield draws some interim lessons. If a model is to be established for future conflict solving, such as the eruption of violence witnessed in. Albania, preparedness by all those involved on an international level and on the ground will be vital for its future, success.

A gamma-ray imager for arms control

Ascertaining the number of warheads on a missile-delivery systems by a remote, nonvisual inspection may be desirable in some arms-control verification scenarios. A gamma-ray imaging system (GRIS) has been developed to inspect for nuclear warheads by imaging the highly penetrating gamma-radiation emitted by radioactive materials integral to warheads. Such an image may be used to obtain the missile loadout. The authors describe the GRIS's operating principles and capabilities, present data, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a system for arms control. They also present field results where GRIS was used on an emplaced Peacekeeper missile. Improvements to GRIS in light of the field trial results are presented. >

Listening for the Bomb: A Study in Nuclear Arms Control Verification Policy, by Philip G. Schrag

Listening for the Bomb: A Study in Nuclear Arms Control Verification Policy, <i>by Philip G. Schrag</i>

Arms Control Verification: Living with Uncertainty

Arms Control Verification: Living with Uncertainty

The Changing Rules of Arms Control Verification: Confidence is Still Possible

The Changing Rules of Arms Control Verification: Confidence is Still Possible

From Law Enforcement to Dispute Settlement: A New Approach to Arms Control Verification and Compliance

From Law Enforcement to Dispute Settlement: A New Approach to Arms Control Verification and Compliance

Arms Control Verification and Other Games Involving Imperfect Detection

This article presents an analysis of the strategic behavior of countries when there is imperfect verification of an arms control agreement. It provides a framework for determining whether an arms control agreement is desirable, shows which factors are needed for the agreement to be maintained in the absence of third-party enforcers, and develops propositions relating changes in verification capabilities to changes in the likelihood of cheating and the use of verification technology. These propositions yield several paradoxes of information (for example, the better the verification technology, the less often it will be employed). Since the analysis incorporates both simultaneous and sequential moves by the players, it provides new insights into other applied areas as well as game theory.

Arms Control Verification and the United Nations: The Chemical Weapons Experience of the 1980s

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Verifying Arms Control Agreements: Arms Control Verification . The Technologies That Make It Possible. Kosta Tsipis, David W. Hafemeister, and Penny Janeway, Eds. Published in cooperation with the Program in Science and Technology for International Security, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by Pergamon- Brassey, Washington, D.C., 1986. xvi, 419 pp., illus. $34.95. From a conference, Cambridge, MA, Feb. 1984.; Verification. .

Verifying Arms Control Agreements: <i>Arms Control Verification</i> . The Technologies That Make It Possible. Kosta Tsipis, David W. Hafemeister, and Penny Janeway, Eds. Published in cooperation with the Program in Science and Technology for International Security, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by Pergamon- Brassey, Washington, D.C., 1986. xvi, 419 pp., illus. $34.95. From a conference, Cambridge, MA, Feb. 1984.; <i>Verification.</i> .

Ranking the Graduate Departments in the 1980s: Toward Objective Qualitative Indicators

This essay is based on several technical works, including Steven J. Brams, Superpower Games: Applying Game Theory to Superpower Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) and Brams and Marek P. Hessel, Threat Power in Sequential International Studies Quarterly 28, no. 1 (March 1984): 15-36, and a number of coauthored papers by Brams and Kilgour: Optimal Deterrence, Social Philosophy & Policy 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 118-135, reprinted in Nuclear Rights/Nuclear Wrongs, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul et al. (London: Basil Blackwell, 1 986), pp. 1 18-135; The Path to Stable Deterrence, in Dynamic Models of International Conflict, ed. Urs Luterbacher and Michael D. Ward (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1985), pp. 11-25; Rational Deescalation, in Evolution, Games, and Learning: Models for Adaptation in Machines and Nature, Physica 16D, ed. Burton Wendroff (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1986); Notes on Arms-Control Verification: A Game-Theoretic Analysis, in Modeling and Analysis of Arms-Control Problems, ed. Rudolf Avenhaus and Reiner K. Huber (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, forthcoming 1986); Verification and Stability: A Game-Theoretic Analysis; Winding Down if Preemption or Escalation Occurs: A GameTheoretic Analysis of Star Wars. Also relevant is a paper coauthored by Brams, Kilgour, Rudolf Avenhaus, and John Fichtner, The Probability of Nuclear War. Extensive citations to the literature on nuclear conflict are included in these sources.

Ranking the Graduate Departments in the 1980s: Toward Objective Qualitative Indicators

This essay is based on several technical works, including Steven J. Brams, Superpower Games: Applying Game Theory to Superpower Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) and Brams and Marek P. Hessel, Threat Power in Sequential International Studies Quarterly 28, no. 1 (March 1984): 15-36, and a number of coauthored papers by Brams and Kilgour: Optimal Deterrence, Social Philosophy & Policy 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 118-135, reprinted in Nuclear Rights/Nuclear Wrongs, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul et al. (London: Basil Blackwell, 1 986), pp. 1 18-135; The Path to Stable Deterrence, in Dynamic Models of International Conflict, ed. Urs Luterbacher and Michael D. Ward (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1985), pp. 11-25; Rational Deescalation, in Evolution, Games, and Learning: Models for Adaptation in Machines and Nature, Physica 16D, ed. Burton Wendroff (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1986); Notes on Arms-Control Verification: A Game-Theoretic Analysis, in Modeling and Analysis of Arms-Control Problems, ed. Rudolf Avenhaus and Reiner K. Huber (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, forthcoming 1986); Verification and Stability: A Game-Theoretic Analysis; Winding Down if Preemption or Escalation Occurs: A GameTheoretic Analysis of Star Wars. Also relevant is a paper coauthored by Brams, Kilgour, Rudolf Avenhaus, and John Fichtner, The Probability of Nuclear War. Extensive citations to the literature on nuclear conflict are included in these sources.

Book reviews

Maritime Strategy: A Study of British Defence Problems. By Peter Gretton. London: Cassell. 1965. 36s. 1966 Naval Review. Edited by Frank Uhlig, Jr. Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute. 1965. No price quoted. The Attack Submarine: A Study in Strategy. By Robert E. Kuenne. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1965. $6.00. 45s. Components of Defense Policy. Edited by Davis B. Bobrow. Chicago: Rand McNally. 1965. $3.95. Legal Aspects of Arms Control Verification in the United States. By Dennis S. Aronowitz. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana. 1965. $6.50. United States Military Assistance. By Harold A. Hovey. New York and London: Praeger and Pall Mall. 1965 and 1966. $15.00. 105s.

Legal Aspects of Arms Control Verification in the United States. By Dennis S. Aronowitz. [Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceans Publications, Inc.1965. 222 pp. £6.50.

Legal Aspects of Arms Control Verification in the United States. By Dennis S. Aronowitz. [Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceans Publications, Inc.1965. 222 pp. £6.50.