The Nuclear Weapons Effects National Enterprise: Report of the Joint Defense Science Board/Threat Reduction Advisory Committee

Actions—both by others and of our own doing—are combining to create potentially tragic consequences on military operations involving the effects of nuclear weapons on the survivability of critical systems for mission assurance. • Regional proliferation risks are growing, accompanied by nation state policy and doctrine that acknowledge limited nuclear use as a legitimate war fighting option. • U.S. counters, especially defensive measures to ensure continued operations in radiation environments, are being reduced—by our own choices. • Intelligence resources are focused elsewhere. • Leadership is poorly educated on military operations in nuclear environments. • The reliance on commercial off-the-shelf components in U.S. military systems has grown while nuclear survivability requirements, testing, and evaluation have declined–both dramatically. As a result, the nation lacks a clear understanding of the response to nuclear radiation exposure of general purpose forces, the Global Information Grid (GIG) and the GIG-edge, and critical infrastructure on which the Department of Defense (DOD) relies. Moreover, the technical expertise and infrastructure to help remedy the situation has decayed significantly. Investments in addressing nuclear survivability have declined precipitously. How did this atrophy of attention and capability come about? The root causes seem to lie deep in the corporate point of view among DOD leadership that has developed since the end of the Cold War about these matters. A number of factors have contributed. Nuclear weapons have not been used, other than in deterrence, for over sixty years. And for the past twenty years, even the deterrent uses have been less immediate and direct, and have seemed less important than before. Since the first Gulf War, conventional operations of great difficulty and importance have consumed DOD and national attention, and have displaced nuclear deterrence as the reigning paradigm. Furthermore, there seems to be widespread belief that the United States will be able to deter enemy use of nuclear weapons.