Terrorist Nuclear Command and Control

Radiological and Nuclear Adversary Project Task 3: Terrorist Nuclear Command and Control July 25, 2012 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Center of Excellence Based at the University of Maryland 3300 Symons Hall • College Park, MD 20742 • 301.405.6600 • www.start.umd.edu National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence About This Report The authors of this report are Charles P. Blair and Gary A. Ackerman. Questions about this report should be directed to Gary Ackerman at [email protected]. Additional authors contributing group profiles are Jeffrey M. Bale and Jarret M. Brachman. The authors would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance: START Research Staff: Suzzette Abbasciano, William Braniff, Mila Johns, Mary Michael, Amy Pate, Lauren Pinson, and John Sawyer. START Research Assistants (for formatting and editing the final report): Richard Burns, Michael Cianfinchi, David Fu, Paul Gallo, Georg Grosse-Hohl, Christina Hesse, Emily Joseph, Anna Lepingwell, Daniel Murphy, Patrick Niceforo, Daniel Richey, and Brittany Steele. Federation of American Scientists (FAS) (for substantive research assistance and report editing): Nilsu Goren and Libby Osher. FAS Research Assistants (for report editing): Drew Beggs, Jonathan Garbose, and Elizabeth Grace. This material is based upon work done by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START, www.start.umd.edu) under contract HSHQDC-10-D-00023 with the Department of Homeland Security. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or START. About START The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is supported in part by the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through a Center of Excellence program based at the University of Maryland. START uses state-of-the-art theories, methods and data from the social and behavioral sciences to improve understanding of the origins, dynamics and social and psychological impacts of terrorism. For more information, contact START at [email protected] or visit www.start.umd.edu. About the Project and Citations Co-Principal Investigators: Charles P. Blair and Gary A. Ackerman Project Managers: Lauren Pinson and John Sawyer To cite this report, please use this format: Blair, Charles P. and Gary A. Ackerman. “Terrorist Nuclear Command and Control,” College Park, MD: START, 2012. Terrorist Nuclear Command and Control National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A US Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence Executive Summary Suddenly aware of terrorist possession of a nuclear weapon, conventional wisdom assumes that US decision makers would immediately use overwhelming preemptive force against both the group’s leadership and its nuclear device. Similarly, it is widely understood that if a terrorist group detonated a nuclear weapon on US soil or its interests abroad, an overwhelming response would follow, targeting the group’s leadership and remaining nuclear devices, if any. The conventional wisdom described above—axiomatic preemption and retaliation—could easily result in the opposite outcome from that which decision makers seek: actual use of a nuclear weapon by terrorists. Preemption or retaliation could still result in one or more nuclear devices being employed against the United States. This counterintuitive outcome is dependent on how the group configures its nuclear command and control (C2). One must assess if a given terrorist group will employ, with regard to nuclear weapons, an authoritative or delegative command and control system. The former—where the decision to employ nuclear weapons is retained solely by a top leader(s)—allows the United States ―decapitation‖ options against leadership centers to prevent or respond to an attack. In contrast, a delegative system—an arrangement in which subordinate commanders are authorized to make nuclear employment decisions under certain defined circumstances—occludes decapitation opportunities; attempts to destroy a terrorist group’s top leadership, even if successful, might trigger the nuclear attack they were intended to neutralize. The implication is that, in the lead-up to a preemptive strike on a nuclear-armed terrorist group or in the immediate aftermath of an attempted or successful nuclear strike on the United States or its interests abroad, US leadership’s calculations about the authoritative or delegative nuclear command and control system employed by terrorists and other violent non-state actors (VNSAs) will be of supreme importance. Unfortunately, to date, little attention has been given to how a terrorist would implement C2 over a single nuclear weapon (or a nascent nuclear arsenal) or what their likely nuclear weapons employment policies would be. By limiting themselves to investigating only the general requirements necessary to attain a nuclear capability, contemporary scholars studying the nexus between terrorists and nuclear weapons would be remiss in assuming that information pertaining to the capability to fabricate or obtain nuclear weapons tells us something about the manner of employment of that weapon. In short, most present perceptions of the possible marriage between terrorists hostile to the United States and nuclear weapons foresee an immediate effort to use such devices against population centers within the United States; preemption or retaliation by the US is assumed. Such a myopic view ignores the very real possibility that nuclear-armed terrorists, utilizing complex and effective nuclear command and control configurations, could still succeed in using nuclear weapons against the United States or its interests abroad. This project challenges these assumptions and seeks to develop a more nuanced understanding of how a variety of VNSAs would likely approach and actualize the command, control and employment of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, it creates a functional model that acts, with proper data input, as a tool for determining the likely command and control configuration of any VNSA—extant or nascent. Construction of such a model and tool involved a multi-method approach that necessitated identifiying the various elements influencing command and control in its a variety of manifestations. The first step was to conduct an exhaustive survey and analysis of relevant literature from three separate domains: First, findings from the disciplines of social and organizational psychology revealed important clues about the universal variables inherent in how organizations are structured and maintained. Of specific concern was how dominion and delegation—the extension of authority over distance— are balanced in complex and critical human interactions. Terrorist Nuclear Command and Control National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A US Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence Second, researchers studied states’ perception of optimal nuclear command and control configurations as well as their actual manifestation from the closing salvos of World War II through the Cold War. This part of the literature assessment identified specific variables influencing known and implied configurations relating directly to nuclear weapons. Third, researchers reviewed VNSA command and control configurations demonstrated during actual attacks. Several incidents were carefully selected to account for command and control configurations in a variety of complex operations involving a spectrum of group traits and attack environments. In sum, all three elements of the literature assessments informed the development of an initial set of potential contributing factors with respect to VNSA nuclear command and control. However, despite the breadth of this analysis, it still presented a static, and perhaps occasionally even outdated, view of what are undoubtedly highly dynamic actors and environments. The second method employed was therefore to augment the analysis of existing knowledge with a structured elicitation of recognized subject matter experts (SMEs), in order to provide more dynamic insights and innovative connections between the plentitude of variables informing the model. The elicitation had as its primary goal to validate and, where necessary, supplement the previously developed set of variables potentially influencing nuclear command and control, by drawing on the collective expertise of the assembled experts, while at the same time controlling insofar as possible for the biases that attend any judgmental analysis. SMEs were drawn from a variety of professions and academic disciplines. Appropriate techniques were selected and designed to fit the needs of the project, including cognitive structuring (debiasing techniques), structured and semi-structured brainstorming session, red teaming, and micro- and macro-model development and subsequent evaluation. Ultimately, the project team extracted a vast number of variables and several models for use in informing the previously developed C2 framework. The resulting integrated framework was then utilized by the project team to produce a model and assessment tool that

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