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Next-generation nuclear disarmament treaties may place limits on the total number of nuclear weapons in some arsenals. Verifying such agreements would require the ability for inspectors to count individual warheads. Attaching unique identifiers directly to nuclear warheads could be problematic due to a range of concerns by the host related to safety, security, and intrusiveness. To resolve this dilemma, we revisit the so-called “Buddy Tag” concept first proposed by Sandia National Laboratories in the early 1990s. Buddy Tags are tokens that must accompany each treaty-accountable item and be produced without delay. In an arms-control context, each treaty partner would receive a number of Buddy Tags, one for each accountable item. Verification would rely on short notice inspections. Sensors on the Buddy Tag would show that it had not been moved to the inspected site after the inspection was declared (e.g., within the last 24–48 hours). If the inspector counted more (or fewer) TAIs than Buddy Tags at the inspected site, a treaty violation could be asserted. Using a number of single-site inspections, an inspecting party can hold the host at risk for discovery of violating the treaty at an enterprise level by possessing more TAIs than the treaty allows. This paper summarizes the performance requirements for an advanced Buddy Tag that is being developed as part of this project, reviews the proposed conduct of operations, and discusses initial results obtained for a first prototype. Background: Confirming Numerical Limits on Declared Treaty-Accountable Items Procedures and techniques to confirm upper limits on the number of nuclear warheads would become a key verification objective should future arms-control agreements place limits on the total number of nuclear weapons in the arsenals. Verifying such agreements would then require the ability for inspectors to “count” individual warheads (rather than launchers). In principle, this can be accomplished by tagging treaty-accountable items with unique identifiers (UIDs), which transforms a numerical limit into a ban on untagged items [1–2]. Direct tagging may be difficult to implement in practice, however, because the host may have safety, performance, or other concerns, and inspections would necessarily be highly intrusive (Figure 1, Options 1–3). Development of concepts to support verifying limits on non-deployed and nonstrategic warheads poses something of a dilemma. On the one hand, the capability to verify numerical limits on weapons in these categories could be useful in both bilateral and multilateral SAND2016-9370C S. DeLand, A. Glaser, J. Brotz, A. Kim, D. Steingart, and B. Reimold, A Fresh Look at the Buddy-Tag Concept 57th INMM Annual Meeting, July 24-28, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 2 contexts. Note for example, that the US Senate Resolution of Ratification for the New START Treaty required the Obama Administration to engage Russia on limits on non-strategic weapons before seeking further reduction in strategic weapons. However, the locations and movements of warheads and weapons in these categories would generally be consi dered sensitive information. Robust verification measures to ensure the authenticity and integrity of a declared treaty accountable item could put such information at risk. To address this dilemma, we revisit the so-called “Buddy Tag” concept first proposed by Sandia National Laboratories in the early 1990s [3]. Buddy Tags are tokens that must accompany each treaty-accountable item and be presented to the inspecting party without delay when requested. In an arms-control context, each treaty partner would receive a specified number of Buddy Tags, one for each accountable item. The treaty partner would be expected to keep the Buddy Tag “near” the accountable item so that the tag could be produced when requested. Verification would rely on short notice inspections. Sensors on the Buddy Tag would show that it had not been moved to the inspected site after the inspection was declared (e.g., within the last 24–48 hours). The ability to produce a Buddy Tag for each treaty accountable item declared and observed in an inspection provides confidence that treaty accountable items found at the site are part of the population of items allowed within the limits of the treaty. Options 4–6 in Figure 1 illustrate possible variations on the Buddy Tag concept; for the remainder of the discussion, we focus on the most basic implementation (Option 4), where no direct connection or association exist between the treaty-accountable item and the Buddy Tag. Figure 1. Some tagging options for nuclear warheads. Options 1–2 require direct access of the inspector to the treaty-accountable item, which is highly intrusive and may be unacceptable to the host. Options 2–3 envision attaching UIDs to the item itself, a requirement that the host might find equally objectionS. DeLand, A. Glaser, J. Brotz, A. Kim, D. Steingart, and B. Reimold, A Fresh Look at the Buddy-Tag Concept 57th INMM Annual Meeting, July 24-28, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 3 able. Option 4 is the basic Buddy Tag concept discussed below. The concept could be further strengthened over time (Option 5–6), but would then face some of the same challenges as the other approaches do. Buddy Tag Inspection Scenarios Figure 2 illustrates the basic procedure of a notional Buddy Tag based inspection. After inspectors arrive on site, they count and inspect the Buddy Tags presented for each treaty accountable item to confirm their authenticity and to verify that the tags have not been moved within the agreed upon time. Inspectors then visually confirm the number of treaty accountable items without directly accessing them. Figure 2. Scenes from a notional Buddy Tag inspection. During an onsite inspection, inspectors would access the Buddy Tags in the non-sensitive area (green) to inspect them. Inspectors would then request to visually confirmation of treaty-accountable items (stored in the red area). Shown on the right is a close-up of a Buddy Tag with a unique identifier (shown in the image as a Reflective Particle Tag [7]) and LED indicators in a tamper-indicating enclosure. Image credit: Tamara Patton. Figure 3 illustrates two important scenarios that are effectively addressed with the Buddy Tag concept. Both scenarios assume that a future treaty places numerical limits on treatyaccountable items, i.e., on the number of warheads that each party possesses. States obtain the number of tags that corresponds to the number of items declared in their baseline declarations. In Scenario 1, non-compliance is detected because not enough Buddy Tags are present at the storage site and cannot be moved there in time. In Scenario 2, the state is compliant, but treaty-accountable items are observed by an inspector in an unexpected location; since these items are accompanied by an identical number of Buddy Tags, however, the inspector accepts them as part of the declared inventory. In the most basic version of the Buddy Tag concept (Option 4 in Figure 1), there is no connection or association between the tag and the treaty-accountable item. This allows the host to use any tag to represent any TAI. This feature could allow the treaty partner to protect operational details (movements of specific items between specific sites) and was considered as an option in the original Buddy Tag concept. Of course, this might also allow the S. DeLand, A. Glaser, J. Brotz, A. Kim, D. Steingart, and B. Reimold, A Fresh Look at the Buddy-Tag Concept 57th INMM Annual Meeting, July 24-28, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 4 host to replace an authentic treaty-accountable item with a mockup. This non-compliance scenario requires the host to conceal the true item elsewhere with the associated risk of detection. Advanced Buddy Tag concepts (Options 5–6) could mitigate this scenario. Figure 3. Two scenarios that are addressed with the Buddy Tag concept. In Scenario 1, a state stores treaty-accountable items at two storage sites (A and B), but declares fewer than actually exist; if the inspector randomly selects Site A for an inspection, non-compliance will be evident as not enough Buddy Tags are present at that site (and tags can’t be moved there without detection). In Scenario 2, the state is compliant with the treaty, but the inspector observes treaty-accountable items in an unexpected location; since these items are accompanied by an identical number of Buddy Tags, however, the inspector accepts them as part of the declared inventory. If Buddy Tags are used as part of a regime that also reduces the number of allowed treaty accountable items, then as reductions are undertaken, Buddy Tags will also need to be destroyed. Destruction of Buddy Tags could be evaluated as a transparency measure in such a regime. Considerations Buddy Tags would be part of a larger monitoring regime. As in all tagging-based approaches to verifying numerical limits, it is important to be able to detect the removal of treaty accountable items from a site before inspectors arrive. Additional measures (e.g., a portal perimeter monitoring system) are required to provide this capability. An additional consideration for a larger monitoring regime is how much access inspectors have. The minimal Buddy Tag regime described here has a finite probability of identifying undeclared items in the declared enterprise. It does not address an undeclared enterprise. Additional access or measures would be required to address concerns that undeclared warheads may be stored in undeclared facilities. There must be some way to determine if an observed object is a treaty accountable item and therefore should have an associated Buddy Tag. In the past, when dealing with missiles, distinguishing features have included physical measurements. Monitoring warheads could be more challenging. Warheads are typically stored in containers which then become a proxy for the warhead. S. DeLand, A. Glaser, J. Brotz, A. Kim, D. St

Minimally Intrusive Verification of Deep Nuclear Warhead Reductions: A Fresh Look at the Buddy-Tag Concept