Terrorist use of radioactive nuclear materials is a serious threat for mass destruction or disruption of civil and military activities. Most worrisome is the use of nuclear devices to cause massive casualties to people and damage to structures. Fortunately, the procurement of adequate material and the engineering design, construction, and transportation and triggering of a nuclear weapon are all difficult problems for terrorist organizations. More likely is a device that combines radioactive materials with conventional explosives to make a radiological dispersion device, commonly called a...

This study is motivated by the observation that the state of health of the United States S&T enterprise seems to be simultaneously characterized by opposite assessments. On the one hand the enterprise is described as being especially vibrant, showing remarkable progress, a high level of innovation and confronted with great opportunities. At the same time the enterprise is described as showing disturbing trends in its workforce, rate of knowledge generation, rate of innovation and international standing.

The most likely means of delivering a nuclear bomb on a major city is through a successful smuggling effort by a terrorist organization. The catastrophic damage it would cause demands cooperative action by all responsible governments. Several U.S. Government programs are in place to deal with this threat.

A strong science and technology (S&T) program has been vitally important to American national security since World War II and has to date given the United States a strategic advantage over competitors. During World War II and throughout the C old War, highly specific and large-scale technology needs led to the concentration of national security S&T (NSST) programs in a few agencies, with little cross-agency coordination. Since the end of the Cold War, circumstances have changed greatly. Meeting new and e merging threats to national security-from global climate change to the proliferation of...

As emerging technologies develop and mature, it is vital that the Department of Defense (DOD) be able to recognize relevant breakthroughs as they emerge and provide the advocacy needed to exploit them quickly. Meeting this responsibility will become increasingly difficult because of the great complexity of the topics involved and the emergence of scientific and technological disciplines that are not extant in the current DOD science and technology (S&T) enterprise, public or private.