The Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on Nuclear Weapon Effects (NWE) Test, Evaluation and Simulation was undertaken with the overall goal of providing a comprehensive evaluation of current and future Department of Defense (DoD) processes for assuring successful operation in nuclear environments. As directed by the Terms of Reference, we have assessed opponent capabilities and DoD processes for establishing and enforcing hardness goals. These assessments have considered the emergence of terrorism as a major threat to the U.S. homeland and deployed forces abroad, the asymmetric attractiveness of the use of nuclear weapons to offset U.S. conventional superiority, and the growing evidence of proliferation of nuclear-capable states. We have also evaluated the evolution of DoD and Department of Energy (DOE) modeling, simulation, and above-ground testing capabilities since the cessation of underground testing to understand our ability to qualify hardened systems. The results of this Task Force were developed independent of, but are highly consistent with, the findings and recommendations of the Congressionally mandated Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission.

Underground facilities are used extensively by many nations to conceal and protect strategic military functions and weapons' stockpiles. Because of their depth and hardened status, however, many of these strategic hard and deeply buried targets could only be put at risk by conventional or nuclear earth penetrating weapons (EPW). Recently, an engineering feasibility study, the robust nuclear earth penetrator program, was started by DOE and DOD to determine if a more effective EPW could be designed using major components of existing nuclear weapons. This activity has created some controversy about, among other things, the level of collateral damage that would ensue if such a weapon were used. To help clarify this issue, the Congress, in P.L. 107-314, directed the Secretary of Defense to request from the NRC a study of the anticipated health and environmental effects of nuclear earth-penetrators and other weapons and the effect of both conventional and nuclear weapons against the storage of biological and chemical weapons. This report provides the results of those analyses. Based on detailed numerical calculations, the report presents a series of findings comparing the effectiveness and expected collateral damage of nuclear EPW and surface nuclear weapons under a variety of conditions.

Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents is a hardbound series that provides primary-source documents and expert commentary on the worldwide counter-terrorism effort. Among the documents collected are transcripts of Congressional testimony, reports by such federal government bodies as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and case law covering issues related to terrorism. Most volumes carry a single theme, and inside each volume the documents appear within topic-based categories. The series also includes a subject index and other indices that guide the user through this complex area of the law. Volume 119, Catastrophic Possibilities Threatening U.S. Security, discusses the nightmare scenario of a catastrophic attack on the United States. While the U.S. national security apparatus remains focused on the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and appears to be postulating a future international security environment defined largely by threats increasingly posed by weak, failing, and failed states, astute strategists are not discounting the possibility of a catastrophic attack on the United States. In this volume, Douglas Lovelace presents a number of documents that help describe, explain, and assess the nature and severity of the threat of a catastrophic attack. Offering expert commentary for each section, Lovelace groups the documents into three categories: Catastrophic Potentialities in the International Security Environment, Countering the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Materials, and Catastrophic Cyber Attack. Documents include a Department of Defense overview of the four categories of strategic challenges, a Government Accountability Office report addressing weapons of mass destruction and the actions needed to allocate resources for counterproliferation programs, and an insightful overview of the threat of catastrophic cyber-attack by the Department of Homeland Security. The commentary and primary sources in Volume 119 will apprise researchers and practitioners of international law and national security of the perils of a catastrophic attack against the United States posed by terrorists, radicals, state failure, and humanitarian disasters.