Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technologies Report of the Defense Science Board Task Forcee
Presented by Drs. Miriam John and Don Kerr, Co-Chairs

Monday, April 7, 2014

A charge was given to this Defense Science Board Task Force to assess technologies in support of future arms control and nonproliferation treaties and agreements. In addressing its charge the Task Force considered a broader future context for nuclear proliferation that included:

- rogue state actions and their potential cascading effects;
- the impact of advancing technologies relevant to nuclear weapons development;
- the growing evidence of networks of cooperation among countries;
- the implications of U.S. policy statements to reduce the importance of nuclear weapons, accompanied by reductions in numbers; and
- the wide range of motivations, capabilities, and approaches that each potential proliferator introduces.

In this future context, monitoring will need to be a continuous process for which persistent surveillance tailored to the environment of concern is required. Moreover, monitoring capabilities will need to be continuously tested for their effectiveness against an array of differing, creative and adaptive proliferators. The Task Force calls for a paradigm shift in which the boundaries are blurred between monitoring for compliance and monitoring for proliferation between cooperative and unilateral measures. A comprehensive monitoring framework that includes improvements to existing tools and capabilities, as well as new approaches and dimensions to traditional monitoring means, is recommended.

Dr. John is serving in various consulting and board roles since her retirement as Vice President of Sandia's California Laboratory in Livermore. During her Sandia career, she worked on a wide variety of programs, including nuclear weapons, chemical and biological defense, missile defense, and solar energy, and provided leadership for a number of the laboratory's energy, national security and homeland security programs. She is a Senior Fellow of the DoD's Defense Science Board and a member of its Threat Reduction Advisory Committee. She is also Chair of the National Research Council's Naval Studies Board and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Institute for Hometown Security. She is a past member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the Board on Army Science and Technology, and DOE's National Commission on Science and Security. Dr. John was appointed a National Associate of the National Academies of Science and Engineering and a member of the Beckman Center Advisory Board. She is the immediate past Chair and Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. She is a member of the Board of Advisors for MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Board of Directors for Draper Laboratory, and the External Advisory Board of Savannah River National Laboratory. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Leidos (formerly a part of SAIC) and the Strategic Advisory Board for RedX Defense Systems. Dr. John is a graduate of Rice (B.S., Chemistry), Tulane (M.S. Chemical Engineering), and Princeton (Ph.D., Chemical Engineering).