Working Group 3: Technical Challenges and Solutions

Working Group 3 examined and assessed:

• How parties can confirm the presence or absence of nuclear warheads and relevant nuclear materials without revealing proliferation sensitive information;
• Effective methods and procedures for establishing and maintaining chain of custody for items at different stages in the nuclear weapons lifecycle; and
• Strategies and tools for software and hardware certification and authentication.

Working Group 3 produced:

• A series of presentations, workshops or seminars on key activities and lessons learned from the U.S.-UK Technical Cooperation for Arms Control program, the UK-Norway Initiative, and other relevant activities;
• An assessment of existing approaches for warhead authentication, including the systems that support attribute measurements and templates, and an outline of other techniques that could increase confidence that something is in fact a nuclear warhead;
• The development of a chain of custody paper, presentation or demonstration involving unique identification and tamper-indicating devices in a specific environment, such as a mock warhead storage area; and
• A mapping of existing and potential technical capabilities necessary to enable monitoring and verification at different stages of a nuclear weapon dismantlement process, and the level of confidence the technology brings to monitoring the dismantlement process, with a list that identifies capability gaps and weaknesses to inform future research.

During the course of its work, WG 3, as it deemed necessary, could have expanded on the tasks listed above.

Jens Wirstam of Sweden and Michele Smith of the United States served as co-chairs of WG3.

The initial program of work took place over the course of approximately 18 months.

Completed work was briefed to the IPNDV Plenary in November 2017.