A Resource Point-based Design Basis Threat: A Concept for Reform of the DOE DBT

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Design Basis Threat (DBT) is the fundamental policy that drives the safeguards and security programs at DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facilities. Criticisms have long been raised by security professionals within the DOE/NNSA community that the DBT results in extremely sophisticated adversary attack scenarios that are highly incredible. Many scenarios possible under the current DBT result in large numbers of adversary personnel attacking DOE/NNSA facilities using multiple very advanced capabilities, weapons, and tactics. It has been argued that these extreme scenarios are unsupported by both analysis of past terrorist attacks and projections of potential future attacks. A concept is offered to fundamentally alter the way the DOE DBT policy is derived and applied. First, a list of the resources and capabilities utilized by adversaries in historical terrorist attacks is coupled with projections of terrorists’ potential out-year capabilities. Then, this list is examined by a group of experts to determine the relative “resource point value” of each capability/resource available to the adversary. These resource point values are relative values factoring in the perceived difficulty for an adversary to acquire/develop, field, deploy, and successfully utilize that capability within the continental United States. Using this list of values, the “total resource point value” of the historical terrorist attacks can be determined. Finally, based on this analysis of the total resources applied by terrorists to past attacks, “resource point caps” are assigned to DOE/NNSA sites; security analysts then design attack scenarios utilizing resources from the list whose cumulative resource point value does not exceed the resource point cap assigned for their site. The proposed DBT method offers several advantages: it does not allow multiple advanced adversary capabilities to be used in a single scenario; it allows the use of large numbers of adversary personnel but at the cost of those personnel being extremely limited in capability; it continues to allow a “graded” approach to threat assignment; and it better captures the adversary’s risk of pre-attack detection when they attempt to utilize advanced resources and capabilities.