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Interdicting a Nuclear-Weapons Project

Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California 93942
Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California 93942
Systems Engineering Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California 93942
Northrop Grumman Corporation, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23452
Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California 93942
gbrown{at}nps.edu
mcarlyle{at}nps.edu
harney{at}nps.edu
eskroch{at}mac.com
kwood{at}nps.edu

A "proliferator" seeks to complete a first small batch of fission weapons as quickly as possible, whereas an "interdictor" wishes to delay that completion for as long as possible. We develop and solve a max-min model that identifies resource-limited interdiction actions that maximally delay completion time of the proliferator's weapons project, given that the proliferator will observe any such actions and adjust his plans to minimize that time. The model incorporates a detailed project-management (critical path method) submodel, and standard optimization software solves the model in a few minutes on a personal computer. We exploit off-the-shelf project-management software to manage a database, control the optimization, and display results. Using a range of levels for interdiction effort, we analyze a published case study that models three alternate uranium-enrichment technologies. The task of "cascade loading" appears in all technologies and turns out to be an inherent fragility for the proliferator at all levels of interdiction effort. Such insights enable policy makers to quantify the effects of interdiction options at their disposal, be they diplomatic, economic, or military.

Subject classifications: government; defense; foreign policy; military; targeting; programming; integer; linear; project management; CPM.
History: Received May 2007; revision received December 2007; accepted February 2008.