Unauthorized nuclear weapon seizure: An analysis of post‐seizure response

Most of the recent attention given to nuclear security has focused on the prevention of theft of fissionable materials. Too little attention has been given to response to the theft of nuclear weapons. This paper takes the unauthorized seizure of a nuclear weapon as an initial condition and attempts to identify potential problem areas by 1) defining a plausible set of scenarios, 2) delineating the sequences of activities that can be expected to occur within each scenario, and 3) applying an analytical technique known as Precedence Network Analysis (PNA) to determine overall time estimates for those activities.