Combating nuclear smuggling? Exploring drivers and challenges to detecting nuclear and radiological materials at maritime facilities

International concern over nuclear terrorism has grown during the past few decades. This has driven a broad spectrum of efforts to strengthen nuclear security globally, including the widespread adoption of radiation-detection technology for border monitoring. Detection systems are now deployed at strategic locations for the purported purpose of detecting and deterring the smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials. However, despite considerable investment in this area, few studies have examined how these programs are implemented or the operational challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. This article seeks to address this with a focus on radiation-detection efforts at maritime facilities. Utilizing practitioner interviews and a survey, this article identifies the factors that influence the planning and use of these systems in this fast-moving environment. The results clearly demonstrate that the implementation of these systems varies significantly across different national and organizational contexts, resulting in a fragmented global nuclear-detection architecture, which arguably undermines efforts to detect trafficked nuclear-threat materials. Greater consideration should therefore be given to developing international standards and guidance, designing and adopting tools to support key parts of the alarm assessment process, and broader sharing of good practice.     

India’s nuclear counter-revolution: nuclear learning and the future of deterrence

ABSTRACT

The India–Pakistan near war of February–March 2019 highlights India’s ongoing evolution in strategic thought and practice since its emergence in 1998 as an overt nuclear-weapon possessor. These changes, involving an increasing willingness to engage in the intentional escalation of conflict with a nuclear-armed rival willing to be the first to use nuclear weapons, challenge certain academic assumptions about the behavior of nuclear-weapon states. In particular, they undermine the expectations of the nuclear-revolution theory—which anticipates nuclear and conventional restraint among nuclear-armed rivals through fear of mutual assured destruction—and the model of nuclear learning which underpins this theory, in which new nuclear-weapon states gradually absorb this restraint through policy-maker learning. This article explores how India’s learning pathway since 1998 has deviated from these expectations. India is instead pursuing its own “revolution,” in the direction of creating capabilities for flexible response and escalation dominance. It concludes by illuminating the similarities between Indian strategic behavior and contemporary practices of other nuclear-armed states, and suggests that New Delhi’s emerging de facto nuclear doctrine and posture is part of a broader empirical challenge to our current conceptions of the nuclear revolution and of nuclear learning.     

激光对抗系统在轻武器实战化训练中的应用

轻武器作战作为特种作战方式的一种,在现代战争中的地位越来越突出。本文阐述了轻武器实战化训练的短板和弱项,提出一种轻武器激光对抗系统,介绍了系统的主要构成和工作原理,并对激光对抗系统在轻武器实战化训练上展开研究。研究表明,采用激光对抗系统辅助训练能从强化轻武器基础训练效果、提升训练对抗意识、提高战斗员维稳处突能力及强化射击能力等几方面有效提高轻武器基础训练成绩和战术训练水平,为改进轻武器实战化训练提供了理论和技术支撑。     

炮兵武器毁伤效能的后验计算方法研究

根据试验结果和武器性能对毁伤效能的计算和排序问题,给出了计算炮兵武器毁伤效能的指数法模型和加权平均模型;结合实例计算并排序,使对压制兵器和反坦克兵器的综合毁伤效能有定量的直观认识;进而分析了两种模型的特点;并提出了需要进一步研究的问题。     

应用神经网络评估舰载武器系统作战效能

为评估水面舰艇舰载武器系统作战效能,最大程度地提高舰艇整体作战能力,采用神经网络评估舰载武器系统的作战效能,按照建立BP网络模型、设计模型结构及确定训练样本的步骤,实现神经网络评估模型创建的全过程。该模型把各个评估指标作为输入,通过历史数据的训练确定神经网络输入、输出的对应关系,从而得出系统的效能值。神经网络评估模型可动态地评估舰载武器系统的作战效能,其评估过程确定的各指标项相互关系能很好地指导舰载武器的战术使用。     

NUCLEAR POWER IN THE MIDDLE EAST:

With the exception of Iran, no Middle Eastern state has an operating nuclear power reactor. Several states, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt are considering constructing such reactors; some have even taken steps towards commencing nuclear power projects. There exist, however, considerable economic, technical, safety, and security challenges to achieving these goals, many of which are acute in the Middle East region. Regional and international cooperation on nuclear technology could not only help regional states meet their energy objectives, but it could also help to build trust among states as a basic step towards a future Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone.     

THE HARD CASES

Many countries received Soviet-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) for civilian nuclear research purposes. Because of inadequate nuclear security at a number of the research sites, U.S. policy has sought to remove or otherwise safely dispose of their HEU stocks as quickly as possible. Although the pace of HEU disposition has accelerated significantly in recent years, several sites have posed formidable technical, economic, and political challenges. This article identifies the major obstacles to HEU removal at two key installations—Kharkiv in Ukraine, and Sosny in Belarus—and recommends a strategy for overcoming these impediments. Key components for a successful disposition strategy include: treating these cases with the urgency they deserve, expanding potential compensation packages, explicitly addressing the institutional and political issues involved, engaging high-level political leaders, working with third parties, and promoting these efforts as part of a nondiscriminatory initiative to phase out HEU in the civilian nuclear sector globally.