US Ability To Identify Source of Nuclear Weapons Decays

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times covers a report released by the National Research Council, which says the ability of the US to identify the source of a nuclear weapon used in a terrorist attack is fragile and eroding. The goals of the highly specialized detective work, known as nuclear attribution, is to clarify options for retaliation and to deter terrorists by letting them know that nuclear devices have fingerprints that atomic specialists can find and trace. 'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' the report warns. 'Without strong leadership, careful planning and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.' The report calls on the federal government to take steps to strengthen its forensic capabilities and argues for the necessity of better planning, more robust budgets, clearer lines of authority and more realistic exercises."

Comments

What they're really saying with this story

[Anonymous Coward]

If a nuke goes off in a US city, we have an excuse for stalling on identifying who's responsible while politicians have a knee-jerk reaction and send US soldiers (or missiles, or UAV's) off on another enormously profitable foreign adventure. And if it turns out they're wrong, we can blame it on anonymous technicians with "decaying skills".

Re:What they're really saying with this story

[gandhi_2]

Nice job with the complete lack of understanding of WWII.

Should we have invaded the Japanese Mainland conventionally? The Battle of Okinawa saw 110,000 dead Japanese troops and 40,000 - 150,000 dead Okinawan civilians. Over 12,000 dead US troops.

And the second bomb was in case the first one didn't work.

Re:What they're really saying with this story

[afabbro]

The nuking of Japan wasn't about avoiding an invasion,

Ah, yes it was, actually.

it was first about preventing the Japanese from a separatist peace treaty with the USSR; and then about showing the USSR (and the rest of the world) who the boss is. And the second bomb was to show the world there's more than one.

I know your history TA told you that, but academics are rewarded for being clever, not for being right. The reason you hear this sort of pap in colleges is that there is no money in simply recording and sharing the truth - one must deconstruct, analyze, and make new angles, right or wrong. In this case - quite wrong.

Re:What they're really saying with this story

[fnj]

Stalin was ready to land in Hokkaido in early September, long before the US could attempt an invasion.

Using what for a Navy? What landing craft and what supporting aircraft carriers and naval gunfire ships? What freighters and tankers for a supply train? The Soviet Navy in its entirety in June 1941 counted zero aircraft carriers, 2 battleships of 1909 design, 2 cruisers, 25 destroyers, 7 escort vessels, and 68 submarines. It hadn't grown much by August 1945, save in destroyers and submarines. I can't locate any evidence that they had any ocean capable landing craft at all. They most definitely had zero experience with mounting a seaborne invasion.

The US Navy on 14 August 1945 counted 28 fleet aircraft carriers, 71 light and escort aircraft carriers, 23 battleships, 72 cruisers, 377 destroyers, 361 frigates and destroyer escorts, 232 submarines; 6768 total vessels, including thousands of landing craft.

As others have noted, the Soviets could have savaged the Japanese army in Manchuria, but mounted an invasion of an island nation of around 100 million people? Not in anyone's dreams. Not for a long, long time after 1945. They had a large submarine force which could have choked off Japanese imports, but US submarines and other naval craft and airplanes had already done that. And none of this is to say that after annihilating Japanese forces in Manchuria, the Soviets might not have offered surrender terms which the Japanese would have accepted, particularly in light of US forces choking off all trade and imports.

The true alternative to the nuclear bombing would never have been a fanciful Soviet invasion of the home islands. It was the complete destruction of the Japanese Navy, merchant marine, and war-making industries which had already been virtually completed by the US by that time. Starvation and continued conventional aerial devastation would have been the only future the Japanese could look forward to. The loss of Japanese life even absent an invasion could have been catastrophic, completely dwarfing the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The losses to have been expected on both sides in the event of a US invasion have been extensively quoted, and there is no need to list them here.

Huh?

[jd]

This is hardly rocket science. You get a sample from each reactor and perform an AMS* run on it. This gives you a fingerprint for that reactor. You get a sample from a nuclear weapon (pre-detonation or post-detonation) or fallout from debris (as in the case of Chernobyl) and perform an AMS* run on that.

*You can also look for specific gamma energies.

My A-Level computer science project could take the masses or energies and correctly infer which isotopes were present, in what ratios, and which reactor the sample likely came from. It double-checked by looking for daughter isotopes (decay products), since there are isotopes that look similar but follow different decay paths. I wrote that in less than a year in Turbo Pascal for the IBM PC.

And the US Government is now saying that all of its nuclear labs combined can't either write their own frigging version, don't have the books I worked from, and don't have any AMS equipment to collect fresh data as needed?

If they are that stupid and incompetent in relation to my talent and skills, when can I expect them to hand Sandia over to my care?

Oh, they're not? Then maybe there's something seriously dodgy about their claim.

Single-mindedness

[causality]

If a nuke goes off in a US city, we have an excuse for stalling on identifying who's responsible while politicians have a knee-jerk reaction and send US soldiers (or missiles, or UAV's) off on another enormously profitable [wikipedia.org] foreign adventure. And if it turns out they're wrong, we can blame it on anonymous technicians with "decaying skills".

I wonder if you realize how right you are about the way the USA does things. From the summary:

Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' the report warns.

You know what else is fragile, under-resourced, and in many respects deteriorating? Our willingness to examine the connection between meddling in the affairs of soverign nations and their more radical factions' desire to go to extremes in order to attack us.

For those who feel inclined to speak about this without having done any research (like that stops anyone these days), I'll sum it up briefly. The USA has a habit of using its intelligence services to overthrow democratically elected officials in foreign countries and usually replaces them with dictators more favorable to its economic interests. Iran during the 1950s is a good example, though only one of many. Do a little research and it is easy enough to come up with several examples of this behavior.

Does anyone plan to argue that this does not constitute provocation in the eyes of those who suffer because of this practice? Yes, the way they retaliate is inhuman and reprehensible, particularly when they go after civilians. I fully agree with that. What I reject is the notion that "they hate us because of our freedoms". I think it's more like, they hate us because they want to be left alone. If that's the case, and if our goal is to end this sort of terrorism, our first responsibility is to end the practices of ours that encourage it. Then we are in a better position to go after the people who persist and come up with better ways to deter them.

If anyone wants a list that they can start researching, I found a decent one here. It's just a list to help you get started. If you want to be informed on this subject you will have to do your own research. If you take the time to do that, however, what will amaze you is how little retaliation there has been.