Defense

How should we understand the risks of BW while the Al Qaeda

leadership and anthrax mailer remain at large—and as the

prospect of another war against Saddam Husayn looms on the

horizon? Our focus here is on the threat of biological weapons to

military forces and operations; where appropriate, we sketch out

some connections to the BW homeland security challenge.

Why So Little Progress?

The chronic gap between requirements and preparedness

apparently is rooted in a set of myths, widely held among U.S.

defense planners, about biological weapons (BW).

Myth One: States Lack Interest in Biological Weapons

Conventional wisdom holds that biological weapons historically

have been of hardly any interest to nations. Defense planners commonly hold that because BW have never been used, they should focus

their time, energy, and resources on more evident problems. What is

wrong with this view?

The record of BW use appears to be fairly slim, although allegations of use are in fact quite numerous. Most incidents remain subjects of dispute, not least because the evidence to prove that such

weapons have been used is extremely unlikely to fall into the hands

of investigators. These difficult-to-prove allegations include the Yellow Rain attacks by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. Also,

many in Asia believe that the United States used biological weapons

in the 1950s in Korea and China—allegations that are unproven and

for which considerable contrary evidence exists.

Overview

A decade ago, the U.S. military and its allies had a close call with

biological weapons (BW) in the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

Iraqi BW could have inflicted horrific casualties on coalition

forces, but the war stopped short of the contingency for which

Iraq had prepared, predeployed, and preauthorized the use of

such weapons: a march on Baghdad to remove the regime. A

decade later, the United States is again poised for war against

Iraq—this time for the explicit purpose of regime removal. Moreover, it is engaged in a war on terrorism against adversaries who

evidently are strongly interested in BW. But the close call of a

decade ago, and the concern it generated among senior Gulf War

military leaders, do not appear to have translated into substantial improvements to the operational capability of current U.S.

military forces to project power and prevail against BW-armed

adversaries. Despite the efforts of many committed individuals,

large vulnerabilities in the U.S. BW defense posture remain. Technology remains in the pipeline and not on the battlefield. Operational concepts seem founded on the assumption that an adversary would not dare use these weapons or, if he did, that U.S.

forces could simply operate around them, as if they were chemical weapons.

The present scare seems to have generated even broader

high-level concern than did the potential exposure to Iraqi BW 10

years ago. How can this concern be translated into an action

agenda that will succeed at reducing present and future threats?

Biological Weapons: Toward a

Threat Reduction Strategy

by Brad Roberts and Michael Moodie

Center for Technology and National Security Policy

The National Defense University (NDU) established the Center for Technology and National Security Policy in June 2001 to study the implications of technological

innovation for U.S. national security policy and military planning. The center combines scientific and technical assessments with analyses of current strategic and

defense policy issues. Its major initial areas of focus include: (1) technologies and concepts that encourage and/or enable the transformation of the Armed Forces, 

(2) developments by defense laboratories, (3) investments in research, development, and acquisition and improvements to their processes, (4) relationships among

the Department of Defense, the industrial sector, and academe, and (5) social science techniques that enhance the detection and prevention of conflict. The staff is

led by two senior analysts who hold the Roosevelt Chair of National Security Policy and the Edison Chair of Science and Technology and who can call on the expertise

of the NDU community and colleagues at institutions nationwide. The papers published in the Defense Horizons series present key research and analysis conducted

by the center and its associate members.

A publication of the

Center for Technology and National Security Policy

National Defense University

JULY 2002

Number 15

Horizons

July 2002 Defense Horizons 1
Brad Roberts is a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense

Analyses. He may be contacted at (703) 845–2489 or via e-mail at

broberts@ida.org. Michael Moodie is president of the Chemical and Biological

Arms Control Institute. Mr. Moodie may be contacted at (202) 296–3550 or via 

e-mail at mmoodie@cbaci.org. The views expressed herein are their own and

should not be attributed to their institutions or any institutional sponsors.

However slim the record of actual use, the record of interest in

and work on biological warfare by states is significant. In World War

II, all major powers undertook BW preparations. Those who were

defeated were compelled to abandon their BW ambitions, but the

victors continued their efforts. During the Cold War, East and West

pursued BW techniques. In the 1960s, Britain and France, and then

the United States, unilaterally renounced biological warfare and

destroyed stockpiles of weapons. The U.S. arsenal at the time consisted of weaponized anthrax and a substantial quantity of nonlethal

agents, primarily for the attack of agricultural targets in the Soviet

Union and China. The Nixon administration abandoned offensive BW

in part to sustain the momentum of détente and asked the Soviet

Union to follow suit. The bilateral U.S.-Soviet agreement fostered the

multilateral Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which

entered into force in 1975. Even before the outbreak of anthrax in

Sverdlovsk in 1979, however, American experts were convinced that

the Soviet Union was violating its treaty undertakings, a view that

the outbreak only reinforced.

The past decade has witnessed numerous alarming revelations

about the scale, scope, content, and sophistication of BW programs

in a number of countries. The first is Iraq, which was compelled to

admit (after 4 years of denial) to the United Nations (UN) that it

had weaponized three different agents in both missiles and bombs.

The nature of Iraqi revelations and the subsequent ejection of UN

inspectors have fueled speculation that the admissions were incomplete and that there may be much more to the Iraqi program than is

currently known. To date, Saddam Husayn has foregone over $100

billion in oil revenue to protect this BW program.

Another country that has raised BW concerns is South Africa.

As hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission revealed,

during apartheid the state pursued a covert chemical and biological

warfare program with rather novel applications. Chemical and biological weapon techniques were exploited in the hope of altering

demographic birth and death rates. Allegedly South Africa also provided BW to those opposing independence movements in neighboring states.

But the revelations about the Soviet/Russian program were the

most alarming. In 1992, Russian president Boris Yeltsin confirmed

the existence of a long-running illicit BW program. The Soviets

apparently had at least four distinct BW development programs. Biopreparat, described in vivid detail by its former deputy director, Ken

Alibek, sought to exploit genetic engineering techniques to field

weapons that would rain on Western cities after nuclear war to slow

national recovery (the purpose of the bioengineering was to reduce

the susceptibility of the ensuing diseases to antibiotic treatment).

By way of comparison for scale of effort, Biopreparat alone employed

more people than the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

Also over the last decade, senior intelligence officials have regularly testified in Congressional hearings that biological weapons

development programs can be found in all of the states deemed

rogues by Washington, including Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Those

officials also regularly express concerns about biological warfare

activities in other countries, including China, where the evidence is

more ambiguous whether interest and potential translate into extant

capability. Further, intelligence officials are careful to point out that,

given the extreme difficulty of identifying covert BW research and

development (R&D) and storage facilities, the number of states with

a BW capability may well be larger.

The prevailing American view that history proves that states

are not much interested in BW is sharply at odds with these realities.

Perhaps it is simply that America’s own abandonment of BW, in combination with the central place of nuclear weapons in our national

security strategy, have given us a view of biological weapons that others do not share.

Myth Two: Biological Weapons Have No Military Utility

A second myth is that biological weapons simply do not have

much military utility. To be sure, they are different from other

weapons—but they are far from useless.

As tactical weapons, biological weapons are not especially useful; they are not immediate in their effects, and they are vulnerable

to meteorological factors that may carry them away or kill them in

the air. This has not prevented countries such as Iraq, however, from

developing battlefield munitions for BW delivery. This view overlooks the simple fact that biological weapons include toxins—chemical substances produced by living organisms—that, like chemical

weapons, are significant in their battlefield utility if delivered in

large quantities.

As strategic weapons, biological weapons offer potentially high

utility; delivered effectively, they are roughly comparable to nuclear

weapons in their mass destruction potential. For states desiring

strategic capabilities but not willing or able to acquire nuclear

weapons, biological weapons may seem a viable substitute. A country

possessing nuclear weapons might find biological weapons redundant, which is part of the reason that the United States abandoned

them. Yet almost all those states identified as rogues are deemed to

be pursuing both biological and nuclear weapons. The debate in the

United States about whether a nuclear or biological weapon is more

powerful misses the point that, for a rogue state capable of acquiring

at most a handful of fission-style nuclear weapons, the killing power

of the available BW arsenal would far outstrip that of the available

nuclear arsenal.

How might U.S. adversaries think about the military utility of

biological weapons in asymmetric conflicts against the United

States? In a major theater war, a U.S. adversary will have framed a

number of strategic objectives, which will vary with the phase of conflict. Early in war, that adversary may seek to achieve a local fait

accompli and then dissuade coalition formation or deter an existing

coalition from acting. Failing this, that adversary might seek to cripple U.S. power projection and defeat coalition military actions. If

unsuccessful in the effort, that adversary might try to prevent a battlefield defeat from becoming strategic defeat (in other words, to

2 Defense Horizons July 2002
secure regime survival in the endgame). If Saddam Husayn’s behavior over the last decade is any guide, a postwar phase will also

include objectives to exact revenge against enemies and prevent a

consolidation of regional forces detrimental to regime interests.

In service of these objectives, a regional power would have multiple tools: conventional weapons, conventionally tipped ballistic

missiles, and perhaps nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

The aggressor may see biological weapons as more certain than

chemical and conventional weapons in achieving the desired result

and as less risky to threaten and use than nuclear weapons. Hence

the argument of many experts that biological weapons may be the

weapon of choice of U.S. adversaries in asymmetric warfare. Especially for an adversary that hopes to cause economic crisis in America, cripple American society, or collapse American power and will,

biological weapons may seem particularly appealing, given the possibility

of using them covertly and escaping

before their ruinous effects take hold.

Technological advances may be

enhancing the utility of biological

weapons as an asymmetric adversary

may perceive them. As the Biopreparat experience suggests, modern

technologies can be exploited to

improve the specificity, viability, durability, producibility, and storability of biological weapons. Moreover, a revolution is under way in the

associated science and technology for biological warfare. If modern

molecular biology (for example, genetic engineering) has been

exploited for warfare purposes, it is not yet publicly known. But one

cannot ignore the fact that, historically, BW programs have always

sought to exploit the best science available at the time.

Myth Three: The Problem Is Too Hard to Solve

A third myth that has cluttered the landscape for the military

planner is the view that the BW problem is simply too hard to solve.

In the face of an almost limitless number of vulnerabilities, the apocalyptic use of biological weapons would indeed appear too difficult to

solve by the traditional means of protection and defense, hence the

heavy reliance on deterrence in the overall U.S. posture. But if the

threat of the future is not so much apocalyptic as asymmetric, then

the issue is what to do other than rely on deterrence to reduce

threats and manage risks.

As the flurry of activity since September 11 suggests, a great

deal can be done. Vaccines, masks, physical protection of facilities,

and forensic capabilities, among many other factors, have been

shown to play a part in protection. (The elements of a more robust

biodefense strategy are elaborated in the second half of this paper.)

From a military planner’s perspective, the key question is whether

capabilities can be created that would enable U.S. forces to project

and prevail against a bold adversary willing to run large risks and

able to employ sophisticated BW capabilities for theater-strategic

purposes. In our assessment, such a capability is within U.S. reach.

But it will not be attained if the rather lethargic pace of evolutionary

improvements evident over the last decade is maintained. Something more revolutionary is necessary.

Myth Four? Terrorists Want Weapons of Mass Destruction

Until September 11, terrorists had rarely engaged in massively

destructive attacks and had made almost no use of weapons of mass

destruction (WMD). Today, most Americans are convinced that terrorists have both the will to use WMD and the technical sophistication to do so in a way that reaps their full mass casualty potential. We

are skeptical on both points, at least regarding nonstate actors

across the board.

The technical argument is an important one. In the BW domain,

a terrorist seeking mass casualties must be capable of more than simply growing materials that sicken people. That material must be kept

alive; the strain must be lethal to humans; the agent has to be disseminated in an aerosol with proper

particle size. The attacker must

have some understanding of the

technical parameters of the target

and of meteorological factors. The

attacker must also have confidence

in the possibility of escape after the

attack. This is not a small skill set.

Moreover, if state BW programs are

any guide, the development of such

skills requires extensive trial and

error—not always the forté of terrorist organizations.

The argument about terrorist motivation is also important. Terrorists generally have not killed as many as they have been capable

of killing. This restraint seems to derive from an understanding of

mass casualty attacks as both unnecessary and counterproductive.

They are unnecessary because terrorists, by and large, have succeeded by conventional means. Also, they are counterproductive

because they might alienate key constituencies, whether among the

public, state sponsors, or the terrorist leadership group. In Brian

Jenkins’ famous words, terrorists want a lot of people watching, not

a lot of people dead. Others have argued that the lack of mass casualty terrorism and effective exploitation of BW has been more a matter of accident and good fortune than capability or intent. Adherents

of this view, including former Secretary of Defense William Cohen,

argue that “it’s not a matter of if but when.”

The attacks of September 11 would seem to settle the debate

about whether terrorists have both the motivation and sophistication to exploit weapons of mass destruction for their full lethal

effect. After all, those were terrorist attacks of unprecedented

sophistication that seemed clearly aimed at achieving mass casualties—had the World Trade Center towers collapsed as the 1993

bombers had intended, perhaps as many as 150,000 would have died.

Moreover, Osama bin Laden’s constituency would appear to be not

the “Arab street” or some other political entity but his god. And terrorists answerable only to their deity have proven historically to be

among the most lethal.

But this debate cannot be considered settled. Bin Laden and

his followers could have killed many more on September 11 if killing

as many as possible had been their primary objective. They now face

July 2002 Defense Horizons 3

most Americans are convinced

that terrorists have both the

will to use WMD and the

technical sophistication to do

so in a way that reaps their

full mass casualty potential
the core dilemma of asymmetric warfare: how to escalate without

creating new interests for the stronger power and thus the incentive

to exploit its power potential more fully. Asymmetric adversaries

want their stronger enemies fearful, not fully engaged—militarily or

otherwise. They seek to win by preventing the stronger partner from

exploiting its full potential. To kill millions in America with biological or other weapons would only commit the United States—and

much of the rest of the international community—to the annihilation of the perpetrators.

The Threat: From Apocalyptic to Asymmetric

So what then is the BW threat? Let us think in both the short

and long term. In the unfolding war on international terrorism, the

short-term BW threat from Al Qaeda depends on its objectives in the

next phase. Does it envision the collapse of the American economy,

society, and power, and if so, does it believe that it can inflict biological attacks on America and still achieve its own goals? Does it perceive certain risks to its objectives of killing too many? These questions provoke much speculation but no clear answers.

In this short-term assessment, the BW threat from state adversaries is also an unresolved question. Almost all the states with

which the United States might find itself at war are suspected of possessing biological weapons. Iraq, for example, may see no alternative

but to exploit such weapons in asymmetric strategies as a way to

escape conflict with a conventionally superior United States. Rogue

state leaders may believe that U.S. military power will be spread thin

in such an evolving and unfolding war—and thus see an incentive to

strike while the United States is overextended.

The wildcard in this assessment is the opportunist, for whom

biological weapons may have a special attraction. The ability to produce and use them surreptitiously makes them appealing to those

waging prolonged covert warfare. This is especially so if the perpetrator seeks a form of strategic misdirection—to lead others to the

conclusion that the attack was perpetrated by some entity that the

actual perpetrator would like to see punished. There are many

potential opportunists in the current conflict, those who would see a

spasm of American military reprisal as somehow in their interest, or

those who would like to alter the course of the current conflict by

drawing in new actors.

In the longer term, what is the threat beyond the current conflict? The current state of U.S. knowledge tells us that:

■ almost any potential U.S. military adversary either has biological

weapons or has a program to get them

■ biological weapons are of rising interest to nonstate actors

■ terrorists are mimics, meaning that hoaxes and limited lethality

anthrax attacks are quite likely to be replicated

■ technology is changing rapidly and also diffusing, offering more and

more state and nonstate actors the means to exploit biological processes for

military ends.

What we do not know is how the current conflict will shape

long-term possibilities. If we have seen the last of biological weapons

in the current conflict, it seems reasonable to hope that future

adversary interest in exploiting such means in war against the

United States will remain limited. But if such weapons are used to

good effect by Al Qaeda, its supporters, or others, then some could

draw the conclusion that such weapons have high utility—thus foreshadowing their broader proliferation and use. In other words, if

such weapons are used to coerce or defeat U.S. military forces, the

Nation will have an overriding interest in demonstrating to one and

all, state and nonstate alike, that the use of such weapons cannot be

tolerated and will invoke the sternest possible reply, not just from

the United States, but the international community as a whole. This

is a high stakes game.

From Threat- to Capabilities-based Planning

This problem fits well into the framework of capabilities-based

planning recently elaborated in the Quadrennial Defense Review

(QDR) 2001. In our view, the case is strong that biological weapons

are in the hands of adversaries developing asymmetric strategies to

counter U.S. military power. But we cannot make a specific assessment of where, when, how, and why biological weapons will be

used—or by whom. This lack of specificity has been one of the primary obstacles to more effective defense planning. The services have

not known how to translate uncertainty about the precise capabilities and motives of potential U.S. adversaries into operationally clear

pictures of consequences and requirements.

Describing a world in which specific U.S. adversaries cannot be

confidently predicted, the QDR calls for a shift in planning focus from

threats to capabilities—from the Cold War picture of an adversary’s

order of battle to a focus on the kinds of capabilities that the U.S. military should be able to field against any adversary. Risk-based

approaches can also be instructive, as they draw on projections of the

likelihood of certain types of attacks and their potential operational

consequences to frame a comprehensive “threat envelope.”

The Response: A Threat Reduction Strategy

How can we best ensure that our resources are used more effectively in the coming decade to reduce the BW threat? What are the

essential ingredients of a BW threat-reduction strategy?

Any strategy must begin with a clear objective. In the long term,

the goal should be to create a threat environment in which the number of adversaries prepared to wage biological warfare is few rather

than many and their capabilities to do so are limited rather than

robust. This requires inhibiting the emergence of new threats driven

by the biotechnology revolution. The short-term goal over the next 5

years should be to reduce existing vulnerabilities by redressing capability shortfalls and eliminating foreign state and nonstate capabilities whenever possible.

Any strategy must also have a comprehensive picture of the

applicable policy tools and the means to exploit them for synergistic

effect. The BW domain has multiple tools of long-term threat reduction: military preparedness, intelligence support, counterterrorism,

Cooperative Threat Reduction, diplomacy, and export controls. In

the short term, the essential tools are in the military domain, which

is the focus of the remainder of this paper. The essential components

of military capability can be summarized by the following schematic:

4 Defense Horizons July 2002

Strategic Response to the BW Challenge

Deterrence ➡ Prevention ➡ Defense ➡ Consequence Management 
Deterrence

People in the defense community generally know what deterrence means and hope that it operates to prevent the use of biological weapons. But as the record of the last decade suggests, actually

translating deterrence concepts into the new operational setting and

bringing into being the capabilities suited to that new setting have

proven difficult.

In the Cold War, deterrence played a central role in preventing

a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange as well as conventional conflict in

Europe. Today, the demands on deterrence are more complicated.

The United States faces not one but many potential adversaries

armed with WMD, both state and nonstate, each with its own value

structure and strategic personality. The goal of deterrence is not only

preventing war or the use of BW in war but also preventing the acquisition of biological weapons and their transfer to others. BW deterrence is actually a multilayered problem: the challenge of deterring

first use differs from the challenges of deterring follow-on use and

last-resort use.

There are various additional challenges. Nuclear threats seem

relevant to the deterrence of some

uses of BW—those of an apocalyptic

or massively destructive character.

But as a deterrent of BW uses of substantially less lethal effect, the credibility of nuclear threats is greatly

debated. The perception of those

threats by others makes their deterrent effect a success or failure. Effective deterrence also requires clear

communication strategies; the wide

range of actors whose decisions the

United States would seek to influence

complicates the formulation of a single credible deterrence message. Deterrence also requires that its target seeks to avoid the

costs of punishment; U.S. commanders need to be aware that in

asymmetric conflicts, adversaries may be baiting them into uses of

force that might be seen on the world stage as excessive, thus discrediting the United States politically.

For these reasons, deterrence cannot play the same central role

in managing the asymmetric BW threat that it played in managing

the apocalyptic Soviet threat. This does not make it irrelevant, just

different. Deterrence by threat of punishment can be expected to

play some continuing role. To the extent the United States brings

into being the kinds of conventional military capabilities that allow

it to achieve strategic effects without nuclear attacks, such threats

ought to gain in credibility. But deterrence by denial of the adversary

ability to achieve the intended operational and strategic effect of

using WMD must play a more important role than before. Deterrence

by denial requires some of the robust capabilities described below.

An unchanged element of the deterrence problem is the challenge of extending deterrence so that friends and allies share in

credible protection. Today, many U.S. friends and allies are in regions

that are also home to BW proliferation. The questions about credibility that dogged extended deterrence during the Cold War still fester today. U.S. friends and allies wonder what risks Washington will

be willing to run to defend its interests in a confrontation with a

WMD-armed regional adversary who is willing and able to project

punishment into the American sanctuary. People in Washington wonder how long those friends and allies will support U.S. war objectives

if the burden of punishment they are asked to bear is disproportionate to that of the United States. What do U.S. friends and allies consider essential to credible deterrence? Shared ballistic missile protection may help answer some of these questions, but the debate

about BW as an anticoalition weapon probably has only just begun.

Prevention

When deterrence strategies prove unreliable in dissuading a

U.S. adversary from preparing or conducting BW attacks on its forces

or interests, the focus of U.S. efforts must shift to prevention. Here,

too, there are no easy solutions.

In its most blunt form, prevention equates with preemption.

Effective counterforce is a complex mission. It requires the ability to

locate weapons storage and production facilities, to characterize

those targets in ways that permit effective attack, to deliver munitions through hardened protection, and

to predict and minimize the collateral

damage such attacks might generate in

the release of toxic and infectious

agents. Since the Persian Gulf War,

headway has been made in developing

these capabilities. But two important

potential Achilles’ heels remain.

One is the rush by BW adversaries

to dig tunnels and place militarily sensitive capabilities in hard and deeply

buried facilities. The effectiveness of

the U.S. air campaigns in the Persian

Gulf and subsequent military actions has only accelerated the effort

to hide underground. Doubts are growing that conventional ordnance can reliably cripple or destroy some of these facilities. This

fuels an interest in maintaining or creating an improved capability to

deliver nuclear weapons against these targets—a matter of intense

debate, given disputes over the deterrent efficacy of such capabilities and the proliferation consequences of such attacks.

The other potential weakness is targeting intelligence. A counterforce attack capability depends above all on knowing the location

of the target. But reliable and timely information about the location

of production, storage, and deployment sites is difficult to come by

through national technical means. There is, therefore, a strong need

to improve BW-related intelligence, especially human intelligence.

Equally important is better BW-related analysis that relies on a

deeper scientific base within the intelligence community than currently exists.

Improving intelligence will also bolster efforts to preempt BW

use by terrorists. Together with law enforcement, intelligence

remains the key means for penetrating terrorist organizations and

stopping them before they act. In the face of the global transnational terrorist challenge, reinvigorated law enforcement and intelligence efforts must involve a substantial international dimension.

July 2002 Defense Horizons 5

U.S. friends and allies

wonder what risks

Washington will be willing

to run to defend its

interests in a confrontation

with a WMD-armed regional

adversary
Active defenses also play a role in the BW defense posture.

These encompass the means to attack delivery systems so that biological weapons do not actually reach their targets. The air defense

capabilities of U.S. forces remain strong. Ballistic missile defense

capabilities remain weak, and, despite the national consensus to

push for deployment of improved theater missile defenses after the

Persian Gulf War, little has changed in the operational capabilities of

U.S. power projection forces. Cruise missiles—which are proliferating widely—make ideal delivery vehicles for biological agents, but as

yet little attention has been given to defending against them. Even if

active defenses cannot eliminate all incoming delivery vehicles, they

make a significant contribution to management of the BW threat by

thinning the arriving threat, thus enabling passive defenses to operate at lower performance levels, reducing the footprint of attacked

areas, and easing the burden on the military medical system.

Another component of the defense tool kit is medical protection. The most effective form of medical defense is vaccination,

which can practically eliminate the threat posed by specific threat

agents. Vaccination against anthrax initially occurred in the Persian

Gulf War. Suspended after the war, anthrax vaccination of the

broader force resumed after a hard-fought debate about the benefits

and risks of broad inoculation. Doubts about the wisdom of inoculation were fueled both by concerns about the safety of the vaccine

itself and the emergence of Gulf War syndrome, as well as allegations

of a Pentagon coverup of the exposure of U.S. forces in the war to

low-level chemical weapons contamination. The vaccination program was then suspended after production problems occurred. If

this unhappy story about one commercially proven vaccine is any

harbinger, the effort to develop additional vaccines to cover the full

range of known and potential threat agents may take decades.

A final component of defense relates to the force protection mission: the protection of U.S. military bases, operations, and personnel

from attack by unconventional, covert means. Especially since the

attacks on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the USS Colein Yemen,

the U.S. military has been seized with the need to provide effective

force protection in noncombat situations. Force protection against

BW attack has remained, however, a relatively low priority.

Many of these capabilities have applications in the civilian

realm as well, especially medical therapeutics and sensors. But

here, too, the challenges are only beginning to come into focus.

Should a national vaccine program against smallpox be established?

What amount of vaccine and other medicines should be maintained

in the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile? What access will the military have to that stockpile, if any? How much of a surge production

capability for vaccines should be maintained in the commercial

base, and what, if anything, should the military pay to maintain that

production base?

Consequence Management

When deterrence, prevention, and defense fail, the focus necessarily shifts to the challenges of coping with the consequences of a

biological attack. If military operations are under way, the overriding

goal must be to sustain campaign operations and accomplish mission

objectives on ground, at sea, or in the air. Over the last decade, recognition has grown of the need for improved consequence management

But such cooperation often touches on highly sensitive areas, making governments—including the United States—reluctant to share

information with their counterparts, even in the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization. In the short term, the September 11 attacks

appear to have generated a new willingness to cooperate internationally. A successful long-term BW threat reduction strategy

requires that this cooperation be sustained when and if the Al

Qaeda threat recedes.

In the longer term, a more comprehensive threat reduction

strategy would complement these counterforce and intelligence

tools of prevention with additional tools. They include, for example,

export controls (which can inhibit access to the necessary technologies and materials that are essentially dual-use in nature) and international efforts aimed at promoting domestic criminalization of

activities inconsistent with international treaty undertakings (that

is, it should not be legal for individuals to produce biological

weapons when it is illegal for states to do so).

Defense

For most members of the U.S. military, BW defense equates

simply with passive defense—a good protective mask. This is far too

simple a view of the requirements of effective defense.

Passive defenses are certainly central. The mission-oriented

protective posture (MOPP) gear designed for combat in a chemically

contaminated environment provides protection to military personnel

against BW agents as well. The burdensome effects of MOPP (such as

heat prostration) are excessive, however, given that defense against

most BW threats can be provided with a far lighter mask and little or

no body protection. Beyond individual protection gear, there is also

collective protection—inflatable command posts or field hospitals as

well as citadels in some naval vessels, for example. In the last decade,

progress has been made in equipping the services with improved passive defenses, though doubts remain about the actual ability of U.S.

forces to sustain combat operations even with such defenses.

Passive defenses depend on sensors to warn personnel that an

attack is under way or has occurred. Such sensors are well developed

for chemical warfare but remain in their infancy in the biological

domain. Chemical sensors allow a military unit to have some

advance warning of an attack and to prepare accordingly; in contrast, biological sensors provide notice of an attack in progress so

that treatment protocols can be initiated. There is no capacity as yet

to provide advance warning. Chemical sensors are widely deployed

with U.S. combat forces; biological sensors are deployed in tiny numbers. Chemical sensors can warn of a broad range of likely and possible agents; biological sensors cover only a handful. With an eye

toward gaining improved BW sensor capability, both military and

civilian entities have spent a lot of R&D money. But these efforts

have not yet produced a substantial change in U.S. capability, or even

a clear picture of when and how new capabilities will actually reach

the field. In the absence of such a sensor system, the real ability to

detect a BW attack lodges in the military medical system, where the

first signs of an attack will manifest as unfamiliar symptoms in the

physician’s office.

6 Defense Horizons July 2002
capabilities. But the focus generally has been on managing the consequences of a chemical attack, leaving the biological attack as a

lesser-included challenge. It is not. The challenges of managing a biological attack are entirely different from those of a chemical attack.

Effective BW consequence management requires first and foremost a capability to identify and diagnose an attack rapidly. This is a

medical problem posing multiple

requirements. Health experts across

the theater must be able to share information on military health demographics in real-time or near-real-time.

Physicians must be trained to identify

diseases that would not normally be

expected in theater. The medical system must deliver the early therapeutics that can make a difference in

saving lives, such as antibiotics in large quantities, as well as vaccines. In the case of contagious diseases, some capacity must exist for

isolating victims. Preparations must also be made for long-term care

of the disabled and disposal of remains that meets both sanitary and

socioreligious requirements. The military personnel system also must

be geared to replace casualties on an individual or unit basis so that

operations can be maintained.

In the last decade, some progress has been made in coming to

terms with these challenges. But external studies continue to suggest that the military medical system is poorly prepared for anything

but the most limited possible adversary uses of biological weapons.

Large-scale use could well cripple existing capabilities—and the

overall fight—if the military medical system collapses.

Again, there are civilian analogues and synergies to be reaped

in the development of strengthened consequence management

capabilities in the civilian and military realms. The key to an effective civilian response to a biological attack is a robust public health

system. At issue for the military is its proper support to and integration with a homeland defense BW posture. In managing the consequences of a limited domestic BW attack, it has little role to play,

except as a source of expertise on agents and treatment protocols.

After all, the first responders to a terrorist BW attack are likely to be

physicians and associated medical professionals in the private and

public healthcare systems. In managing the consequences of a larger

attack on society, the military may have law enforcement and mass

treatment responsibilities in conjunction with a declaration of martial law by the President. Calibrating the scope and content of military support to the BW homeland defense mission is an entirely separate challenge from calibrating military support to other homeland

defense missions, given the unique characteristics of BW and their

consequences for national security.

Progress versus Success

This analysis suggests that some progress has been made. Some

tailoring of deterrence strategies has occurred for the new problem

of asymmetric warfare. Improved counterforce attack capabilities

have begun to reach the forces. Fielding of new and improved passive and active defenses and limited progress on vaccines have

improved the capacity to defend against BW attacks. Consequence

management techniques have received increasing attention that is

reflected in greater interest and funding.

But success still seems a long way off. To be sure, success may

be in hand if an aggressor’s use of BW is extremely limited and meant

more to scare than harm. And success against an adversary willing to

use BW to kill millions cannot be achieved through a strategy of protection and defense; we will have to

continue to bet on deterrence. But

what does success between these two

extremes require—success in terms of

meeting the challenges of an adversary

willing to use biological weapons in

large quantities in campaign-style

attacks for military goals? Success

against such an adversary requires more than the modest incremental improvements above.

In the consequence management realm, success requires a

robust medical response capability scaled and equipped to meet the

challenge of the larger threat.

In the defense realm, success requires broad-based medical

protection against a spectrum of agents, sensors capable of rapid

detection at a distance, and passive protection gear suited to the

specific requirements of BW.

In the prevention realm, success requires counterforce attack

assets capable of defeating the BW agent being attacked (so-called

agent-defeat weapons) and improved human intelligence.

In the deterrence realm, success requires reducing reliance on

nuclear threats for BW attacks when nuclear responses clearly

would not be credible, through increasing reliance on conventional

strategic capabilities and improved defenses.

The Role of Science and Technology

Science and technology (S&T) play a critical role in meeting

these challenges. Indeed, the services and regional military commands have generally looked to the acquisition pipeline, believing

that eventually the silver bullet will emerge that allows them to plan

and prosecute wars against BW-armed adversaries as if the BW threat

simply did not exist. They want a technical fix so that they can go

about business as usual. The problem is that technology cannot provide this fix. It is essential to the solution, but it is not the solution.

The closest we might ever get to a silver bullet is in the world

of vaccines. The anthrax vaccine is indeed a full remedy to the

anthrax threat. In fact, a fully vaccinated force could likely suffer an

anthrax attack without any noticeable impact on operations.

Because anthrax is considered one of the premier BW agents, eliminating it as a threat would pay enormous dividends. But the known

BW threat agents are numerous, and the number of potential threat

agents is even larger. A plan has been put in place to deliver vaccines

against an increasing number of threat agents. Even if vaccine development is fully successful, the process of gaining approval to produce and deliver such vaccines could take at least a decade or two.

The current Food and Drug Administration approval process adds

years to bringing a new vaccine to market; even a revised regulatory

process would not eliminate the time required for sufficient health

and safety reviews. Developing specific vaccines for every possible

July 2002 Defense Horizons 7

the key to an effective

civilian response to a

biological attack is a robust

public health system
BW agent is, therefore, an impossible job, hence the rising interest

in broad-spectrum protection for which some technological promise

exists. But whether such full-spectrum vaccine protection will ever

be achieved against all known or plausible threat agents is unknown.

Technological breakthroughs elsewhere in the medical S&T

world can also pay important dividends. Medical diagnostics and

other pharmaceutical treatments promise improved performance of

the medical system. But the real problems confronting the military

medical system appear not so much in the S&T realm as elsewhere.

The monitoring of disease outbreaks appears as poorly developed on

the military as on the civilian side. Medical training for biological

warfare remains deficient, though improved over that of a decade

ago. Service readiness for BW-specific contingencies appears uneven

but generally low. There is little evidence that the service components or the regional commands have integrated the requirements of

a severely taxed military medical system into their plans.

Technological breakthroughs on the nonmedical side can also

be expected to pay important dividends. Sensors will gain in sensitivity and specificity. Nonnuclear agent-defeat weapons will be

fielded. Improved capabilities to attack missiles, both ballistic and

cruise, are beginning to reach the field, with dramatic improvements

expected at the theater level. In these areas, however, as so often

elsewhere in the S&T realm, the search for the perfect solution has

sometimes been the enemy of finding an adequate solution. For

example, the sensor technology that seems likely to reach fruition in

a decade or so promises dramatic improvements in the ability of U.S.

forces to detect BW attack. But for today’s military commander, the

key question is why some remedial capabilities have only barely

begun to reach the field a decade after the Persian Gulf War. Moreover, here, as in the medical realm, the solutions are as much operational as technical. Having new capabilities in place will require new

concepts of operations and the training to back them. Biosensors, for

example, do not stand alone; they are part of a larger system that

must be able to reach back to remote expertise, transport samples to

laboratories for diagnosis, and enable the on-site commander to

manage risks through informed decisionmaking. As yet, little attention apparently has been given to identifying the decisions that will

have to be made or the information necessary to make them.

To secure the potential benefits of improved science and technology, a much stronger public-private partnership is needed. In the

Cold War, U.S. defense industries played a critical role in developing

national security technology. Until September 11, the biotechnology

and pharmaceutical industries wanted as little as possible to do with

preparations against biowarfare and bioterrorism. The Nation cannot afford them to be bystanders in an era of BW vulnerability.

Opportunities abound to work together to meet both military and

civilian needs.

Longer-Term Perspective

This agenda addresses what the United States can do now in

the military realm to strengthen its capacity to deter, prevent, defend

against, and manage the consequences of BW attacks. But planners

and policymakers should recognize that this is a national strategy for

what is an international problem. A national response alone is

unlikely to produce sufficient dividends against a problem that is so

complex and multifaceted, one that plagues virtually every region of

the world. If, somehow, the wrong response is made and biological

weapons come to be seen as useful and legitimate instruments of

military power and political coercion, everyone will pay a price.

Approaching this problem in a more global perspective means

first thinking about opportunities. Stronger international partnerships can pay dividends in the S&T realm, for example, given the

advanced biotechnological capabilities of U.S. friends and allies.

Some of those allies have also done their own planning for managing

bioterrorism attacks, and sharing “lessons learned” would benefit all

who participate.

In taking a global approach, however, a central question for

Washington is how to build and lead a long-term global effort to

reduce BW threats. The United States needs the help of allies in constraining adversary access to BW-relevant technologies, material,

and expertise. It needs them to strengthen their own defenses

against BW attack so that they can remain partnered with the United

States when power must be projected. Their continued commitment

to the norm against biological weapons is necessary, not least so that

a U.S. decision in extremis to punish norm violators meets with

broad international support instead of resounding criticism.

So long as Al Qaeda and its supporters continue to attempt terrorist attacks on the United States and other countries, the will to

cooperate should remain sufficient to pay short-term dividends. But

over the long term, will other countries support the web of military,

political, and economic measures the United States promotes? A

common international perception of the U.S. anti-BW agenda is that

Washington emphasizes military preparedness at the expense of

political and economic tools. It seems to be sending the message to

“do it our way, or it won’t happen.” Washington, therefore, must do a

better job convincing its partners that its anti-BW strategy encompasses all available policy instruments, each suited to a specific task.

Both a national and an international agenda are essential to reducing the short- and long-term BW threat. We will close on success in

the anti-BW effort only if we work diligently down both tracks.

8 Defense Horizons July 2002

Defense Horizons is published by the Center for Technology and National Security Policy through the

Publication Directorate of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University.

Defense Horizons and other National Defense University publications are available online at

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/press/nduphp.html.

The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are those of the

contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or any other

department or agency of the Federal Government.

Center for Technology and National Security Policy

Hans Binnendijk

Director