Only a few nonnuclear weapons states with uranium-fueled power plants have kept the weapons option open, and none has evidenced activities intended for diverting fissionable material from its civilian system. Analysis of alternative strategies shows that acquisition of nuclear weapons material would probably depend on military production facilities rather than diversion. Horizontal proliferatio...

Introduction Weapons tracing is a set of methods used to identify weapons and ammunition and track their origins. It has an established role in criminal investigations, where it is typically used not only to prove a firearm-related offence, but also to uncover the source of illicit supplies to criminals. By contrast, weapons tracing in conflict and post-conflict situations—for example, by peace...

The spread of nuclear weapons to potential U.S. adversaries raises important questions for U.S. nuclear strategy and foreign policy. During the Cold War, U.S. nuclear strategy was designed to meet the challenges posed by the Soviet Union, a superpower adversary that deployed an enormous nuclear arsenal and was viewed as a threat to vital U.S. interests. Today the United States faces a strikingl...

VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1, 2000 LINCOLN LABORATORY JOURNAL 3 B   have seldom been used throughout history [1–4]. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 outlawed the possession and use of biological weapons; this convention has been ratified by all but a handful of major nations [5], and no nation has an overt, declared biological-weapons capability. Despite these facts, i...

T terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 concentrated minds on the potential of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), combining a timeless tactic with the most destructive weaponry. Th e margins of international tolerance of non-compliance with the WMD nonproliferation and disarmament norms and obligations narrowed dramatically after that date. Affi rming WMD proliferation as a thre...

Since the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have captured the attention of social scientists and the public alike. Some argue that the world benefits from nuclear weapons, claiming that they prevent war. Skeptics do not share this view and worry that nuclear weapons will only intensify conflict. Unfortunately, most theories about the benefits of nuclear weapons await judge...

On 4 January 2016, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague announced that the process of destroying Syrian chemical weapons had been completed. Despite that declaration of success, problems obviously persist. Since April 2014, the civil war parties have accused each other in more than one hundred cases of having used chemical weapons. In more than twenty inc...

Would domestic terrorists use biological weapons?1 The conventional wisdom among experts has been that terrorists “want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead” and are unlikely to turn to weapons of mass destruction.2 A new school of thought proposes that improved technology has made biological attacks resulting in hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths all but inevitable. Whil...