Cryptographic Data Exchange for Nuclear Warheads

Abstract: Nuclear arms control treaties have historically focused on strategic nuclear delivery systems, leaving nuclear warheads outside formal verification frameworks. This paper presents a cryptographic protocol for secure and verifiable warhead tracking, addressing challenges in nuclear warhead verification without requiring intrusive physical inspections. Our system leverages commitment schemes and zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zkSNARKs) to ensure compliance with treaty constraints while preserving the confidentiality of sensitive nuclear warhead data. We propose a cryptographic "Warhead Passport" tracking system that chains commitments to individual warheads over their life cycle, enabling periodic challenges and real-time verification of treaty compliance. Our implementation follows real-world treaty constraints, integrates U.S. and Russian dual-hash combiners (SHA-family & GOST R 34.11 family) for cryptographic robustness and political constraints, and ensures forward security by preventing retroactive data manipulation. This work builds on policy research from prior arms control studies and provides a practical foundation for implementing secure, auditable NSNW verification mechanisms.