The acquired results from the experiment, as well as the methodology, monitoring arrangement and the discovered limitations and opportunities for future use of commercially available satellite imagery in support of on-site inspections, are discussed in the paper. The paper is co-authored by ONN Analyst Jaewoo Shin, ONN Regional Issues Strategist Veronika Bedenko and UNIDIR's Senior Researcher Pavel Podvig. It was originally published and presented at the 2023 INMM/ESARDA Annual Meeting in Vienna, Austria.
In March 2023, the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) conducted a field experiment, simulating an on-site inspection to verify the absence of nuclear warheads at a military site. As part of the experiment, UNIDIR, in collaboration with Open Nuclear Network (ONN), tested the applicability of commercially available satellite imagery to support the inspection.
