Science & Global Security最新文献

{"title":"Flight Performance Analysis of the Samad Attack Drones Operated by Houthi Armed Forces","authors":"M. Voskuijl, Thomas Dekkers, R. Savelsberg","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1846279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1846279","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years, there has been a large increase in the use of uncrewed attack aircraft, or attack drones, in the Yemen conflict. At the same time, the flight endurance and payload capabilities of these uncrewed aerial vehicles seem to have increased significantly. This article presents a flight performance analysis of the Samad aircraft family operated by Ansar Allah, the Houthi rebel movement. The analysis is based on information available in the public domain and accounts for modeling uncertainties, and terrain under weather conditions typical for Yemen and Saudi Arabia. With only limited data available in the form of images, the analysis method assesses the flight performance of fixed-wing attack aircraft with high aspect ratio wings and powered by piston engines and propellers. Results demonstrate that it is highly unlikely that the Samad-2 version could reach strategic locations in Saudi Arabia when launched from Houthi-controlled territory. The analysis shows that Samad-3, however, can achieve a flight range in excess of 1800 km, bringing Riyadh and oil installations near the Persian Gulf into reach. The results of the study can be used to predict the locations from which the Samad UAV can be deployed in an attack. Furthermore, it gives insight into the increasing threat of this type of UAV when employed by non-state actors. The methods and tools developed in this study can be used to analyze the capabilities of other UAV with similar configurations.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"36 1","pages":"113 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78394740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Geologic Analysis of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Uranium Resources and Mines","authors":"Sulgiye Park, Allison Puccioni, C. Tracy, E. Serbin, R. Ewing","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1789275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1789275","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The mining and milling of uranium ore is the first step in the production of fissile material and is a rate-limiting step for the indigenous production of nuclear weapons in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). This study reports a geologic analysis of uranium mines in the DPRK in order to bound the state’s potential uranium production. The analysis suggests that the uranium deposits of the possible mines are of four types: (1) black shale (metamorphosed organic shale); (2) limestone; (3) granite/metasomatic; and (4) metamorphic deposits. Comparison with geologically-related, uranium-bearing host rocks in the Republic of Korea (ROK) indicate that DPRK uranium mines are associated with medium-to-high quantities of average low-grade ore (0.001–0.04 wt.% uranium). Using this low-grade ore, expansion of the state’s nuclear arsenal would require the extraction of larger quantities of uranium ore than has been previously assumed. The DPRK’s geology could, therefore, limit the future development of its nuclear weapons program.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"34 1","pages":"80 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74004342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A question of Uranium","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1812203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1812203","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"46 1","pages":"61 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74127038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impact of Fuel Enrichment on Key Naval Reactor Characteristics and Non-Proliferation Concerns","authors":"E. Mané","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1757827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1757827","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This work reports on a notional compact naval reactor core running at 50 MWt full power—designed to investigate core life, reactivity margins and plutonium inventory for different levels of enrichment. A simplified computer model was constructed with the OpenMC neutron transport code and coupled to ONIX to calculate depletion of the initial fuel load—uranium dioxide mixed with gadolinia. It is shown that a notional low enriched uranium naval core could sustain criticality for 5–7 years at full-power and overcome xenon poison transients. Self-shielding of the burnable poison has been found to be significant in the radial direction and should be considered in such core design. Negative Doppler and moderator coefficients have been found for the low enriched cores. The plutonium inventory of the spent fuel produced at the end of life as a function of enrichment is also investigated. This study bears direct implications for the nonproliferation regime by suggesting that it may be possible to reduce the technical incentives for the use of highly enriched uranium on naval reactors.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"1 1","pages":"63 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90176133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Data Science in Support of Radiation Detection for Border Monitoring: An Exploratory Study","authors":"Christopher Hobbs, P. McBurney, D. Oliver","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1716461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1716461","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Radiation detection technology is widely deployed to identify undeclared nuclear or radiological materials in transit. However, in certain environments the effective use of radiation detection systems is complicated by the presence of significant quantities of naturally occurring radioactive materials that trigger nuisance alarms which divert attention from valid investigations. The frequency of nuisance alarms sometimes results in the raising of alarming thresholds, reducing the likelihood that systems will detect the low levels of radioactivity produced by key threat materials such as shielded highly enriched uranium. This paper explores the potential of using data science techniques, such as dynamic time warping and agglomerative hierarchical clustering, to provide new insights into the cause of alarms within the maritime shipping environment. These methods are used to analyze the spatial radiation profiles generated by shipments of naturally occurring radioactive materials as they are passed through radiation portal monitors. Applied to a real-life dataset of alarming occupancies, the application of these techniques is shown to preferentially group and identify similar commodities. With further testing and development, the data-driven approach to alarm assessment presented in this paper could be used to characterize shipments of naturally occurring radioactive materials at the primary scanning stage, significantly reducing time spent resolving nuisance alarms.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"37 6 1","pages":"28 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80197710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Applying Data Science to Global Security","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1737419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1737419","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of Science & Global Security is made up of articles applying ideas about securing, collecting, storing and processing data to three critical nuclear issues. The articles cover the vulnerabilities to cyber-threats of U.S. nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles and potentially those of other nuclear-armed states as these systems undergo modernization; the need to improve the reliability of detecting nuclear weapons, weapon materials, and radioactive materials that might be hidden inside global shipping containers transported through ports around the world; the challenge of protecting nuclear weapons information which some states might insist on treating as sensitive as warheads are authenticated during a process of verified disarmament. Assessing Priorities toward Achieving Dependable and Secure Computing in the U.S. ICBM Force by Lauren J. Borja offers a first principles assessment of cybersecurity for the more than 400U.S. land-based nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles which are slated to be modernized over the next several decades. The article applies core ideas from computer security, dependable computing, and systems analysis to explore the types of vulnerabilities that may be at play and which may emerge as the system is modernized. It highlights the need to reconsider U.S nuclear weapons policies that potentially further add to these cybersecurity vulnerabilities and increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent nuclear weapons use. The article Data Science in Support of Radiation Detection for Border Monitoring: An Exploratory Study by Christopher Hobbs, Peter McBurney and Dominic Oliver offers the beginning of a new approach to speed up the process of identifying shipping containers bearing naturally occurring radioactive materials which produce false alarms each day at radiation portal monitors installed at many ports around the world. Using a data set from portal monitors in three countries, the article uses data science techniques to look at the radiation profile generated by containers which set off alarms as containers pass through these portals to show that it is possible to characterize and identify containers carrying common radioactive materials. This may reduce the amount of time it takes to investigate and resolve false alarms. The third article in the issue is Physical Public Templates for Nuclear Warhead Verification by Alexander Glaser, Boaz Barak, Moritz K€ utt, and Sebastien Philippe. The authentication of electronic hardware and software used for national security related data storage and processing is always difficult. It can be an especially serious concern in a nuclear weapons inspection that is part of a treaty arrangement if there are suspicions on either side about efforts to subvert the inspection. This article offers two new ideas for how to protect the potentially sensitive gamma spectrum from a nuclear warhead collected as part of a treaty-mandated inspection. First, it sugge","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"21 1","pages":"1 - 1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91079284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Physical Public Templates for Nuclear Warhead Verification","authors":"A. Glaser, B. Barak, M. Kütt, Sébastien Philippe","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2020.1728885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2020.1728885","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Passive gamma spectroscopy has been successfully used for nuclear warhead inspection systems based on the template-matching approach. The most prominent example of such a system is Sandia’s Trusted Radiation Identification System (TRIS), which is based on an earlier system used at Pantex since 1994 to confirm the identities of containerized plutonium pits. Remarkably, TRIS uses only 16 energy bins, i.e., 16 numbers, to accomplish this task. Additional experiments have shown that such a template-matching method could be performed in a way that does not reveal classified information. To be used in a real inspection setting, however, inspectors must gain confidence that the system hardware and software work as designed and display genuine measurements through a process known as authentication. It also requires establishing and maintaining confidence in the template, i.e., that the data characterizing the treaty accountable item is genuine and has not been altered. In the case of TRIS, the template data are stored electronically and signed as a whole, such that no information about the template can ever be shared with inspectors as a confidence-building measure. Here, we propose an inspection protocol that uses a different approach: Information is stored in the form of punched cards that encode the secret template. Public masks can be used to reveal selected features of the template, e.g., total counts in particular energy bins, while keeping others secret, constraining certain physical properties of the treaty accountable item and providing increasing levels of transparency. We illustrate our approach using Princeton’s Information Barrier Experimental II based on a vintage 6502 processor.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"403 1","pages":"48 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77701293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing Priorities towards Achieving Dependable and Secure Computing in the U.S. ICBM Force","authors":"L. Borja","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2019.1698126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2019.1698126","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper is an assessment of cybersecurity principles within the nuclear arsenal of the United States, specifically the nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile forces. Ongoing modernizations will introduce new components, and potentially new vulnerabilities, into U.S. nuclear forces. The principles for achieving secure operations from the fields of computer security, dependable computing, and systems analysis, and the extent to which they are addressed within the management of U.S. nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles is discussed. This paper then considers the types of vulnerabilities that may be overlooked during modernizations, followed by a critique of U.S. nuclear command and control policy choices that could make the consequences of these vulnerabilities more catastrophic.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"2 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88351899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing the PRISM reactor as a disposition option for the British plutonium stockpile","authors":"Christopher Fichtlscherer, F. Frieß, M. Kütt","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2019.1681736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2019.1681736","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The United Kingdom considered using the PRISM sodium-cooled fast reactor as a disposition option for its civilian plutonium from reprocessed MAGNOX and Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor spent fuel. This article assesses the plutonium disposition capabilities of the PRISM reactor for the U.K. stockpile. The article first describes how the stockpile was created. It then provides a simulation of reactor burn-up, the resultant isotopic compositions of PRISM spent fuel are simulated and the dose rates of that fuel. Dose rates greater than 1 Sv/h at 1 meter from the fuel were assumed to establish “proliferation resistance” and would constitute a radiation barrier to proliferators. Results suggest that the U.K. stockpile could be irradiated to that proliferation resistance target in 31.3 years, using two 840 MWth PRISM cores operating at a 30 MWd/kgHM burnup rate. By the time all the U.K. plutonium has been irradiated, however a fraction of the PRISM spent fuel will have decayed below the proliferation resistance target. Thus, even though in 2019 PRISM was removed from consideration by the U.K. government because it is not expected to be available for that use for another 20 years, this paper concludes that should PRISM become available earlier it would still be a poor choice for plutonium disposition.","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"20 1","pages":"124 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75046287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Science & Global Security: 30 years on, still a big mission","authors":"H. Feiveson, F. V. von Hippel","doi":"10.1080/08929882.2019.1676954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2019.1676954","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55952,"journal":{"name":"Science & Global Security","volume":"12 1","pages":"75 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73126525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}