To From Bob Nelson Jerry Str1ckfaden LANL MIGHTY DERRINGER COMMENTS M D was the most realfstfc exercise ever conducted by the NEST community A1 1 tno e nvulv G 1 hnning end conduct should be congratulated l NEST was well integrated into the embassy portion of the EST The NEST members of EST provided a good condu1t to the technical expertise of the NEST advance party and subsequently the main body 2 The non-embassy port1on of the EST conducted unilateral operations that nearly resulted in the detonation of the device They clearly don't realize the consequences of nuclear yield 3 The Montrevian actors did a superb job and greatly contributed to the success of the exercise Planners underestimated the interaction between the GOm and the players A larger better directed GOM control cell would have more realistic play in this area 4 The technical participants NEST EOD NAVEOD TEOiCEN did an excellent job of acquiring and assimilating data drawing inferences and sharing information Decisions were not always reached by consensus but all sides were generally represented in the decision process There appeared to be less chasing of red herrings than 1n previous exercises · · S In field exercises the physical layout of scenario features is very important MD controllers several times were forced to scramble in order to compensate for lack of or inconsistency of preparation A physical scenario czar should be annointed in major field exercises to absolutely control physical scenario aspects In addition because everything cannot be antic1pated a dedicated control cell must be created to interact with the players on scenario matters This will greatly reduce confusion and increase the consistency of information fed to the players 6 A very important aspect of this exercise is the decision of what disablement approach to take The players decided to attack the portion of the device about which very little was know instead of that portion that was well characterized Th1s may have been driven somewhat by exercise constraints 7 Operations at the WP were chaotic This was primarily due to the well known problem of insufficient EOO training in NEST techniques In MO this was exacerbated by FORSCOM 1 s decision to send a large number of green troops for training a decision inappropriate for an expensive multi-agency national level exercise 8 On the other hand EOO control of access to the WP was absolute and probably accurately reflects the situation that would prevail in a rea1 1nci dent _ - ' t ' llJ i lJLA l ' ' r ' J 3 UNCI A C QTFTi 'D J '1 1' j ' I I 9 I I The nuclear design aspect of A I was not always well represented at the OSC staff meetings Misstatements were made and misconceptions were proliferated 10 Threat dev1ce design greatly influences play 1n a NEST exerc1se A great deal of thought should be g1ven to exercise requirements upon tr a dev ke 11 Re-entry was a shambles I Some planning had been done but 1mplementat1on of the plan was poor the conflicting requirements of health and safety vs assessment not having been worked out Exercise constraints contributed substantially to this confusion MO was the first major exercise wherein re-entry was played and will presumably prompt further NEST-EOD planning l