Keeping Terrorists From the Bomb
The first and most important way to avert a nuclear terrorist attack is to prevent terrorists from acquiring an intact weapon or from collecting a sufficient amount of fissile material to build a nuclear device. if terrorists do succeed in either of these endeavors, thwarting an attack will ultimately depend on locating any missing fissile material before a weapon can be assembled or intercepting a device before it can be delivered to the target and detonated. These are extremely challenging tasks that cannot be relied upon as a primary line of defense. Achieving this objective requires adopting a multi-dimensional approach that significantly decreases the prospects that terrorists will succeed at each major stage in their plot — obtaining a nuclear weapon, transporting the weapon to the target, and enjoying the benefits they anticipate will follow if they conduct a nuclear attack. Not only will such an approach increase the likelihood that prospective nuclear terrorists will fail in their efforts, it could as a result dissuade terrorists from seriously pursuing the nuclear option at all. There are three main areas that can contribute to dissuasion: delegitimizing the killing of civilians generally and the use of nuclear weapons specifically,reducing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium and securing existing weapons and fissile material, and developing and deploying radiation monitors and other detection systems.
First, efforts must be made to foster the perception among terrorists that an act of nuclear terrorism will not help them to achieve their aims, but will instead prove counterproductive by causing sympathizers and potential supporters to turn away from them rather than rally to their side. if terrorists can be convinced that a successful catastrophic attack will ultimately backfire,they may grow reluctant to pursue this type of attack in favor of more “acceptable” forms of violence. Al Qaeda, for example, has recently displayed some concern over the increasingly widespread criticism of its violent tactics, particularly the murder of Muslim civilians. The US government should therefore work through intermediaries to publicize as widely as possible al Qaeda’s acts of violence and their immediate and longer-term effects on those who have suffered from them. It should also seek to support individuals and organizations throughout the Muslim world that not only eschew violence, but can publicly and credibly challenge al Qaeda by arguing that the large-scale killing of civilians and the use of nuclear weapons are immoral, religiously impermissible, and unlikely to help the situation of those whom al Qaeda claims to be fighting for.
Second, if terrorists cannot be persuaded to abandon the idea of nuclear terrorism, the next best thing would be to convince them that it is not a realistic option. Specifically,if a terrorist group concludes that it cannot acquire a nuclear weapon or enough fissile material to make one on its own, or that any attempt to do so would require enormous human and material resources and would still have only a very small chance of succeeding, it will likely devote most of those resources elsewhere. Continuing and, where possible, accelerating and expanding efforts to eliminate or secure potentially vulnerable nuclear weapons and material can therefore thwart determined terrorists from obtaining these items and dissuade prospective nuclear terrorists from attempting to do so in the first place. Moreover, as individual nations and international organizations work to secure loose weapons and material, a corresponding effort should also be made to publicize their successes and ensure that these actions are exploited for their dissuasive value.
Finally, detection systems can also play an important role in preventing a nuclear terrorist attack, not only by stopping a group from successfully transporting a nuclear weapon or material to its target, but also by dissuading terrorists from pursuing the nuclear option. in concert with the other recommendations discussed above, the deployment of radiation monitors and other detection systems can increase the prospect that potential nuclear terrorists will judge the possibility of success as too low to merit the effort required. it is important, however, to ensure that the presence of these systems influences terrorists’ calculations in the expected way — i.e., that they discourage terrorists from pursuing nuclear weapons and material as opposed to providing a roadmap for which routes, ports, or border crossings should be avoided. in addition to “red teaming” how terrorists might attempt to sneak a weapon or fissile material into the United States, analyses should be undertaken to determine how to convince terrorists that they will be unable to circumvent existing defenses, which may depend as much on publicizing (and possibly exaggerating) existing capabilities as developing new ones.
Stopping Terrorists from Delivering a Weapon
Although preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons and material is the best, safest, and most feasible way to avoid a catastrophic attack, prudence demands that the US Government be as well prepared as possible to locate and intercept a terrorist group that obtains these items before it can deliver a weapon to its intended target. Two areas in particular are likely to play a crucial role in these efforts: human intelligence and Special Operations Forces.
Given the inherent difficulty of detecting nuclear weapons and material, especially from any significant distance, locating and stopping terrorists who are in possession of these items may depend first and foremost on knowing where to look. Yet terrorist groups are often reluctant to use electronic forms of communication that could be monitored, and al Qaeda is notoriously difficult to penetrate through the cultivation of human sources. Therefore, resources might be better spent on the comparatively easier task of developing assets within the military and/or scientific establishments of nations that are the most probable sources of loose nuclear weapons and material, especially if individuals working in particularly high-risk facilities or more senior individuals who would be among the first to learn of any missing items can be identified in advance.
if terrorists obtain stolen nuclear material or a nuclear weapon and have been located by human intelligence sources or some other means, Special Operations Forces will likely be tasked with interdicting and securing these items. ideally, special operations personnel trained to render safe a nuclear device would be capable of responding quickly to a potential nuclear terrorist threat. In reality, however, the small number of personnel qualified for this mission, the high demand for those personnel in support of ongoing operations, the inherent uncertainty over where a nuclear terrorist threat might materialize, and the constraints imposed by geography all make the ideal response capability difficult to realize. Despite these problems, a number of measures could be taken to enable qualified personnel to respond to a nuclear terrorist threat in relatively short order, for example training select allies and partners in render-safe procedures, prepositioning necessary equipment overseas at bases or operating sites centrally located to various known smuggling routes and/or terrorist sanctuaries, and forward-deploying a small, dedicated response team in Europe or Central Asia.