Part of a series examining the technology competition between security organizations and terrorist organizations, this report focuses on understanding how terrorist groups make technology choices and consequently how the United States can discourage their adoption of advanced conventional weapons. Five types of advanced conventional weapons are identified that could provide terrorists with a new and qualitatively different weapon capability: sniper rifles, squad-level weapons, antitank missiles, large limpet mines, and mortar systems. Two key methods of limiting the threat from these systems in the hands of terrorists are explored: raising awareness of the threat, and reducing the threat through procedural and technical use controls. Technical use controls offer the surest limitations on terrorist use, but are by far most practical to incorporate when the system is in its design phase. GPS-guided mortars are the most worrisome of the advanced conventional weapons, attractive to terrorists and difficult to mitigate with only awareness and procedural controls. Fortunately, these systems are still in their design phase. For this reason, taking steps now to control GPS-guided mortars is urgent. Two initial steps are needed to begin placing additional procedural and technical use controls on these precise, indirect fire weapons: begin diplomatic discussions with the key producer nations to raise awareness of potential terrorist use of these systems, and commission a detailed technical study of the technical modules and architecture needed to implement proposed technical controls. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can play a key role in both these steps by pushing to begin diplomatic discussions and by conducting a detailed study, perhaps with the National Security Agency, of the technical architecture for use controls. Additionally, DHS should become a permanent member of the interagency panels considering arms exports. The time to begin negotiating and developing meaningful controls on GPS-guided mortars is now, before the opportunity is lost.

The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past.

In 1996, the International Court of Justice delivered an Advisory Opinion on the legality of the use of nuclear weapons in which the Court stated that 'while the existing international law relating to the protection and safeguarding of the environment does not specifically prohibit the use of nuclear weapons it indicates important environmental factors that are properly to be taken into account in the context of the implementation of the principles and rules of the law applicable in armed conflict.'

The present work analyses this conclusion, focusing on the question whether or not the use of nuclear weapons during international armed conflict would violate existing norms of public international law relating to the protection and safeguarding of the environment. Although the use of weaponry during armed conflict is usually related to the protection of individuals, the rapidly emerging appreciation of, and the worldwide realization of the intrinsic value of, the natural environment as an indispensable asset for the continuation of life, including human life, on this planet, both for present and future generations, warrants a thorough and extensive examination of the question of the (il)legality of the employment of nuclear weapons from the point of view of international environmental protection law.

The book consists of two parts. Part I discusses the historical development and the effects of nuclear weapons; Part II discusses the protection of the environment during international armed conflict under ius in bello, ius ad bellum and ius pacis. Only then is it possible to assess the legality of the use of nuclear weapons under this particular set of rules.