# Presentation: 454792

## Counterterrorism andLong-Range R&D Needs

**Michael R. Anastasio**
**Deputy Director for Strategic Operations**
**Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory**
**February 28, 2002**

**This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract W-7405-Eng-48.**

**UCRL-PRES-147348**

## What’s the threat?

**Weapons of mass destruction (WMD)**
**Nuclear**
**Biological**
**Chemical**
**Radiological**
**Explosive/leveraged**
**Cyber**
**Proliferation of WMD**
**To countries with difficult or hostile relations**
**To foreign subnational or terrorist groups**
**Misuse of U.S. facilities or diversion of materials**
**By U.S. extremist groups**
**By foreign terrorists operating inside U.S.**

## Why now?

**Why now?**

**Russian instability**
**Economic drivers to export nuclear technology**
**Shaky protection and control of Soviet-legacy nuclear materials**
**Former soviet weapons workers poorly paid**
**Spread of technology**
**Globilization of commerce**
**Widespread availability of information (e.g., Internet)**
**Revolution in bioscience and biotechnology**
**Apparent shift in terrorist goals**
**More sweeping agendas (e.g., “Islamic revolution”)**
**Capture media attention with major catastrophe**
**Barrier to terrorist use of WMD broken**
**1995 sarin attack in Tokyo subway killed 12, sickened 5000**
**September 11 WTC attack killed 3000+**
**Anthrax in mail killed 5**

**Terrorist attacks with nuclear devices or bioagents could kill 10,000s to 100,000s**

## Significance of September 11

**A defining moment**
**Pearl Harbor of 21st Century**
**Demonstrated terrorist capabilities**
**Substantial funding**
**Extensive planning**
**Innovative attack strategy**
**Effective OpSec**
**Forced us to better understand “costs” of U.S. way of life**
**Exploitation of open society**
**Civil liberties vs. rule of law**
**Motivated U.S. to act**
**Transformed “maybe” into reality**

**September 11 and U.S. response will fundamentally change aspects of everyday life**

## Counterterrorism grand challenges

**Counterterrorism grand challenges**

**Detection of terrorist intentions and activities before attack**
**Interdiction of WMD far from target**

**S&T can make essential breakthroughs, but it must be closely tied to policy and operations**

**Improved defense against nuclear attack**
**Improved detection of a biological agent release**
**Forensic attribution of terrorist attack**

- Biological Materials

- Inorganics

## S&T avenues in radiation detection

**Advanced gamma-ray imagers**
**Reconstruction of multiple interactions from ****multi-channel pulse shape measurements**
**Image and spectral reconstruction with multi-element detector measurements**
**Portable, solid-state spectrometers operating at room temperature**
**Crystal growth, annealing, and processing**
**Low-noise-readout electronics**
**Neutron imagers**
**Detailed modeling of multiple scattering in multi-element and distributed-readout detector systems**
**Large sensor networks (fixed and mobile)**
**Statistical methods and modeling techniques to correlate sensor measurements and integrate measurements with other information**
**Active interrogation systems **
**Neutron and photon sources and interactions**

**Key applications:****	****Cargo container inspection**
**	****Interdiction of ground-delivered nuclear device or materials**

## Enabling technologies required for proliferation detection

**Tagging, tracking, and locating**
**Inertial systems (MEMS gyros)**
**Low-power microdevices**
**Cooperative behavior algorithms**
**Secure communications**
**Ultra-wideband arrays**
**Configure antennas**
**High-bandwidth networks**
**Low-probability-of-intercept/detection techniques**

**CAPS**
**WMD**

**MIDB**
**Archival**
**INTEL**

**GIS**

**Sensors**
**• • • •**
**• • • •**

**Objective: Widespread deployment of unobtrusive technologies for detecting signatures of WMD activities, together with tools for extracting actionable information from massive volumes of data**

**Sensor emplacement**
**Miniature air vehicle, robotics, inflatable platforms**
**Hybrid guidance and control systems**
**High-density power sources**
**Information science**
**Signature analysis and feature extraction**
**Distributed data fusion**
**Decision immersion tools**
**New algorithms for intelligence sensor integration**

**Short Term **
**Systems**

## Advances in photonics and optics needed for global surveillance

**Low-power, high-bandwidth communications technology**
**Low probability of intercept and detection**
**Transmit enormous volumes of data and information**
**Photonic crystal fiber (PCF)**
**Potentially reaches 100 W/fiber (vs. 10–15 W for conventional fiber)**
**Compact, rugged, and efficient**

**25 ******
**core**

**2mm**

**2mm**

- 252-element segmented adaptive optic device

- Nonlinear optical phase-conjugation mirror prototype

- Ultra-lightweight
- optical systems

**Objective: On-demand (anytime, anywhere) monitoring**

**Retro-modulator phase conjugate mirror**
**Automatic pointing and tracking**
**Atmospheric correction, like adaptive optics**
**Low power**
**Gbit/s data rates**
**Ultra-lightweight optical systems**
**Diffractive optics**
**Microlaminate mirrors**
**MEMS adaptive optics for aberration correction**

## Breakthroughs in information science needed to turn data into insight

**Build and visualize enormous conceptual graphs **
**Software and hardware that allows for scaling**
**Populate conceptual graph from disparate data sources**
**Data sources are constantly updated**
**Information in data sources must be deconflicted**
**Create chains of relationships within and among disjointed information**
**Quantify the confidence of these chains of relationships**
**Identify interesting (suspicious) patterns**

**This capability is critical to improved intelligence analysis and a prerequisite of integrating new data sources into the intelligence assessment process**

## S&T challenges in forensic attribution

**S&T challenges in forensic attribution**

**Signatures of WMD**
**Comprehensive database**
**Chemical, radiological, and biological**
**Ultratrace levels**
**Real-time analysis**
**In-the-field sample collection and analysis**
**Widely deployed, easy to use**
**Meets law-enforcement evidence requirements (e.g., chain of custody)**
**Rapid nuclear attribution capability**
**Source of nuclear material**
**Pathway to perpetrator, target**

**Goal: Identification of perpetrators of any act of WMD terrorism, including origins of weapons or weapon materials, suppliers, and intermediaries, to support legal, diplomatic, or military response**