The Measure of Performance: System-Effectiveness Testing

There is significant evidence supporting the fact that nuclear terrorism is a goal of a number of extremist organizations. There is not a more important mission than protecting nuclear materials from extremists, psychotics, and others intending harm to the world community and the consequences of a nuclear detonation are so great that our governments have taken significant actions assure that materials are protected. All of these actions are in response to a formidable adversary intent on obtaining a nuclear capability. This threat has lead to huge investments by the nuclear community to make nuclear materials extremely unattractive targets for theft or diversion. Documents that guide the protection of nuclear materials have been drastically revised since the attacks on the United States in September 2001. The strategies now employed to mitigate the revised threat have also changed significantly. Sites are deploying new technologies such as remote operated weapons, advanced armored vehicles, intrusion delay technologies, explosive detection technologies, sniper detection systems, and command and control technologies. All of the technologies are being deployed with the goal of winning a potential conflict with terrorists. But how does leadership know that they have achieved an acceptable level of performance once these technologies are implemented? Some organizations use a compliance-based approach which identifies required elements to be implemented. Some use heuristics to analyze the program. While both approaches have value and merit, they fall short of providing quantitative data on the actual performance of the protective system. Modeling and simulations play an important role in protection planning and are extremely important tools to help with the protection of nuclear materials, but the most quantitative means of validation lies with demonstrated performance through a testing program.