Verifying Deep Reductions in the Nuclear Arsenals: Development and Demonstration of a Motion-Detection Subsystem for a 'Buddy Tag' Using Non-Export Controlled Accelerometers

Future nuclear arms-control agreements may place numerical limits on items that are difficult to monitor with national technical means, even when complemented with onsite inspections. Such items could include small objects and mobile assets, such as non-deployed nuclear warheads and mobile missile launchers. Typically, this verification task can be addressed with unique identifiers, but standard tagging techniques may be unacceptable in this case due to host concerns about safety and intrusiveness. First proposed in the late 1980s and partially developed by Sandia National Laboratories in the early 1990s, the “Proximity Tag” or “Buddy Tag” concept seeks to overcome these concerns by separating the tag from the treaty accountable item itself. A buddy tag has two key elements: a tamper-indicating enclosure and a motion-detection system designed to detect illicit movements in a stand-down period. As part of this project, we have built a buddy-tag prototype for demonstration and evaluation purposes. This paper reviews the design choices and functionalities of the tag’s motion-detection subsystem. We pursue a modular approach for the tag’s hardware, built around an Arduino-class microcontroller and a non-export-controlled low-noise accelerometer, and use open-source algorithms for the motion-detection software. We discuss the results of an extensive experimental campaign involving both indoor and outdoor measurements assessing the performance of the tag under real-world environmental conditions.