***Counter WMD Technologies and Capabilities Development
Abstract
Counter WMD Technologies and Capabilities Development encompasses the following areas. 1. Defeat Technologies develops, integrates, demonstrates, and transitions innovative kinetic and non-kinetic weapon capabilities to expand traditional and asymmetric options available to Combatant Commanders to deny, disrupt, and defeat Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) while minimizing collateral effects. 2. Technology development focuses on the physical or functional defeat of (1) chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological threat materials, (2) an adversary's ability to deliver the same, as well as (3) the physical and non-physical support networks enabling both. This program achieves these goals through the systematic identification and maturation of technologies capable of defeating WMD agents or agent-based processes, then integrating them into weapons, delivery systems, or rapid WMD elimination capabilities. This effort includes developing specific WMD agent/agent-based process simulants, test infrastructure, and sampling capability required for effective development, testing, and evaluation of next generation capabilities to ensure optimum weapon solutions are achieved. Requirements are delineated in Agency Priority Lists for lethal and non-lethal Countering WMD (CWMD) capability. Based on specified requirements, weapons and capabilities are transitioned to a Service program of record for system acquisition. 3. Counter-terrorism technologies research develops and transitions a full spectrum of new technologies to counter emergent WMD threats. This research supports the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in two areas: (1) counter proliferation research is a collaborative effort to develop advanced, warfighter-unique technologies to defeat terrorist WMD development and acquisition pathways, to include defeat of the devices themselves, while minimizing risks to U.S. forces; (2) counterterrorism concepts and technologies to integrate and synchronize activities that prevent terrorists and rogue nation states from developing, acquiring, proliferating, or using WMD. This effort supports Commander, USSOCOM responsibilities under the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Unified Command Plan. 4. Counterforce technologies research develops, integrates, demonstrates, and transitions capabilities to find, characterize, assess, and plan for the defeat of WMD threats. This research is focused in three areas: (1) WMD battlespace awareness provides warfighters with tools to find, characterize, and assess WMD threats; (2) The weapons effects research provides modernized, fast-running, validated CWMD planning tools and integrates modeling and simulation software to optimize the execution of WMD and associated hard target defeat operations; (3) innovative engineering of select promising technologies discovered under fundamental and basic research to increase the effectiveness of weapons against blast doors and other underground structures for functional defeat of Underground Facilities (UGFs), WMD, and their delivery systems. 5. DTRA provides a unique national test bed capability for simulated weapons of mass destruction (WMD) facility characterization, weapon-target interaction, and WMD facility defeat testing. This test bed is capable of responding to operational needs outside of DTRA’s research portfolio and is used by the DoD, Military Services, Combatant Commanders, and other Federal Agencies to evaluate the implications of WMD, conventional weapons, and other special weapons used against U.S. military or civilian systems and targets. 6. Target assessment technologies research develops, integrates, tests, demonstrates, and transitions processes and technologies providing advanced capabilities in the areas of WMD target assessment, automated advanced targeting development (A2TD) and full dimensional defeat. This research develops analytical tools and processes required to: (1) find and characterize WMD targets and associated hard and deeply buried targets (HDBTs); and (2) assess the results of physical and functional defeat mechanisms (such as direct attack). The A2TD initiative seeks to apply emerging computer assisted technologies to automate target characterization for hard targets and WMD targets. The end result will be faster and more efficient characterization of important hard targets and WMD targets. The full dimensional defeat project aims to develop an enterprise capability for finding and identifying a facility, characterizing its function and physical layout, determining current or future vulnerabilities to available defeat mechanisms, planning and executing an attack, assessing damage, and denying reconstitution efforts. The dynamic capabilities encompassed in this effort provide Combatant Commands and the intelligence community tools and processes needed to hold at risk high value hard targets and WMD targets possessed by adversaries.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2020
- Source ID
- RG_0603160BR_3_0400_PB_2020