Verifying The Absence Of Nuclear Weapons In A Field Exercise

Robust verification is an essential element of the nuclear disarmament process. Each stage of this process presents its own verification challenges and requires the development of technical tools and organizational arrangements adapted to its specific circumstances. One of the disarmament steps includes a verifiable removal of nuclear weapons from operational bases, so they are no longer mated to delivery vehicles, such as missiles, and are not stored at the base-level storage facilities. Since it is the absence of weapons that is verified, the verification procedure in this case does not require access to information about weapons or their classified characteristics. Nevertheless, the verification arrangements still have to take into account practical aspects of an inspection that would be conducted at a military base. These include the procedures for obtaining access to an inspected facility, the inspection protocol, the tools available to inspectors and the types of measurements they would be allowed to perform. This paper presents a scenario of a field exercise that could be used to test these procedures in practice. The scenario considers a simulated inspection at a military facility that would confirm the absence of nuclear weapons. It discusses all elements of the inspection procedure that is built to take into account the experience of the past arms control and disarmament treaties, such as START, New START, the INF Treaty, and the CFE Treaty. The scenario is designed to be implemented during an actual field exercise at an active military base.