Researching Tomorrow's Chem-Bio Defense

This is part three of my investigation of the DOD Chemical Biological Defense Program (CBDP) budget for FY2008. Today, we invade the lair of the research and development community. Sixty-one percent of the R&D budget for next year ($610 million) is in budget activities 6.1 through 6.3, what is called science and technology or the tech base. Not much happens in here other than applied research into potential technologies that might develop into a practical application - someday. And that pays for a lot of scientists' salaries. The other 39 percent is advanced development (about $380 million), budget activities 6.4 and 6.5. These funds are used to prove that prototypes work and that a given project is ready for manufacture and fielding.

I'm going to talk about the advanced development funds first, because it's easier to explain. The medics will develop biological vaccines to counter plague and botulinum toxin ($40 million and $19 million respectively). We might see a fielded plague vaccine in 2010 - maybe. Don't count on a bot tox vaccine prior to 2015. Nearly $70 million is going to the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI). Although the project is supposed to be focused on far future "silver bullets" for BW threats, for some reason, DOD will start spending advanced development funds next year. On what, I have no idea, since the investigational part has barely started in the tech base. I'm not sure DOD knows what they'll be doing either - it's been more of a "here, take this $2 billion and put it to work with industry" kind of affair. Ready, fire, aim.

Medical chemical research funding is about one fourth of that of med bio research funding. The $36 million is being split nearly equally on an advanced anticonvulsant system, a nerve agent bioscavenger, and an improved nerve agent treatment system. There's about $7 million being spent at AFRRI for medical radiological countermeasures. This is a new area - previous to 2007, the CBDP really didn't want to do med rad countermeasures. Then Dale Klein (from DOE) decided that the CBDP might want to think about being a CBRN Defense Program. Hasn't completely happened yet, in part because the Air Force and Navy really don't want to do joint radiological programs, and there is so much medical radiological research already going on outside of the program.

The tech base for medical accounts for 42 percent of the R&D budget. There's nearly $250 million being spent in the TMTI program, $85.7 million spent on biological defense research, and $62 million being spent on chemical defense research. Don't ask me what they spend it on. Lots of drug discovery efforts, studies on how things work in the body, potential pre- and post-treatment therapies. I'm not a medical guy, and tech base is frankly a lot of small, high risk projects, many of which aren't successful. It's not DARPA-like, but it's not uncommon to see a project go for 3-4 years before being terminated if it isn't leading anywhere.

On the non-medical side, about 13 percent of the R&D funds goes to advanced development projects. Detection projects make up 4.5 percent ($45 million) of the R&D funds. In biodetection, most funds are going to the development of critical reagents for biological detection ($10 million) and development of a tactical (man-portable) biological agent detector ($3 million). I'm not enamored of a Joint Biological Tactical Detector System (JBTDS). The warfighters want a bio equivalent to the automatic chemical detectors, refusing to listen to the analysts quietly pointing out that chemical hazards are somewhat different acting than biological hazards. The requirements guys have ignored the challenge of managing the analysis of thousands of liquid samples every week if this system were to be fielded.

On the chemical detection side, DOD is spending $12 million on continued R&D for the Joint Chemical Agent Detector (yes, even as it is being fielded, there's still significant R&D tweaking going on). About the same is being spent on the joint reconnaissance systems, probably tests and evaluations. A few million being spent on the agent water monitor system. There's really not a lot of new R&D being spent in CB detection, largely in part that we've got good systems out there, and there are few potential future technologies to reach out toward.

Individual protection R&D, funded at $12.5 million, is addressing the Joint Service Aircrew Mask, probably for final testing and approval prior to production. No R&D going to new suits or masks for the first time in a while, and is not expected for several years more (other than in the tech base). In part this is because (again) we have pretty good suits and masks, and there are no great leaps forward in this area. Also, the CBDP is being lazy and not really searching for what ought to be the next big idea in individual protection. We're stuck with hot suits and rubber masks. If something comes up, they'll move the money.

Collective protection has just one R&D project, the Joint Expeditionary Collective Protection project. This effort will field mobile field shelters and expedient shelters replacing... well, there is nothing out there right now for troops other than medics. There's $14 million going to that project, which is really a realigned effort from a former CP shelter project that crashed and burned when the users wouldn't back off their unrealistic demands on technology and engineering (we want it much smaller, with air conditioning, easy to transport... whine, whine). So we're trying again, and maybe we'll see some shelters in 3-4 years.

Decontamination projects have a big $9 million going to three sensitive decontamination projects: the sensitive equipment decon system, a platform interior decon system, and a human remains decon system. As I mentioned yesterday, the sensitive equipment decon project may be ready in 2010, and the interior decon (for inside vehicles) won't be ready prior to 2012. Right now, the only option to handle contaminated electronic equipment is to junk it. The last project, human remains decon, is a "special demand" by the medics and quartermasters. OSD wants to have the capability to decon contaminated corpses in such a manner that the bodies can 1) come home to Mom and Dad, and 2) be viewed in an open casket funeral. Really unreasonable demands, considering the bodies were formerly contaminated with CB warfare agents, but who ever said OSD leadership was reasonable? So the CBDP will buy some commercial technology and test it, field it in an effort to shut them up.

Information systems are actually getting the most R&D funds (after medical) at $48 million (nearly 5% of the R&D budget), going to the three projects mentioned yesterday - JEM, JOEF, and JWARN. The great thing about software projects is that they can always spend R&D funds to tweak their products, even after they've been fielded (as Microsoft can tell us). Nothing really sexy - it's the usual stuff. Improve the accuracy of how models demonstrate how CB hazards act in the real world, display the information on military communication systems, and include more medical and environmental data in the models. The tough part is, as ever, integrating CB hazard data into battlefield data without stalling communications.

Tech base for the nonmedical efforts are funded at $186 million - about half that of medical tech base (thanks to TMTI). I don't get much details from the tech base - again, it pays for 3-4 year long science projects that investigate various ways to improve the above capabilities. Standoff and point detection science gets the most (more than $40 million in 2008), with information systems getting $30 million and protection (individual and collective) getting $25 million. Decon sciences get less than $10 million, because there aren't a lot of new technologies there. Maybe $30 million for various science research projects aimed at finding out more about threat agents and other innovative research efforts.

The test and evaluation money ($67 million, a bit under 7 percent of the advanced R&D) is just going to building capabilities (buying equipment, outfitting buildings) to modernize the DOD's ability to... test and evaluate CB defense equipment (duh). Lots of money for Dugway, Edgewood, and a few other small T&E sites - special equipment, development of test methods, etc etc. Yawn. Has to be done, I guess, to ensure the equipment works as advertised.

That's about it. Not really sexy like the Missile Defense Agency. But then again, they have a few billion - several billion actually - more than the CBDP does. Again, more information on these R&D projects can be found in the OSD annual report to Congress on CB defense.

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

Buying Next Year's Chem-Bio Gear

Following up yesterday's post on the new budget, let's see what chem-bio defense equipment the Defense Department is planning to buy. The top line items include (unsurprisingly) CB detection gear, individual protection equipment, and vaccines. About 36 percent of procurement dollars are going to buy specialized CB defense vehicles for the Army and CB detectors for the services. Nearly 24 percent is going to individual protective equipment - mostly masks and suits. The rest is seven percent for collective protection systems, five percent for decon systems, less than three percent for information systems, and nine percent for biological vaccines. Last, 16 percent for installation protection equipment, largely paying for hazmat gear and exercises.

The CB Defense Program (CBDP) is buying 28 M31E2 Biological Integrated Detection System (BIDS) for the Army next year, each costing about $3.4 million. These feature the Joint Biological Point Detection System (JBPDS) as the heart of the system. Most of these BIDS platoons were justified as homeland security capabilities, and we're going to be buying them for several more years. The Navy's getting eleven JBPDS for their ships, for about $330,000 each. DOD will be buying 25,000 biological assay tickets at $50 a pop as the first phase of its Joint CBR Agent Water Monitor.  All the rest of biodetection funds is in R&D (tomorrow).

On the chemical side, the Army will get 13 Strykers modified with point and standoff chemical detectors (the Joint Service Lightweight Standoff Chemical Agent Detector) and other equipment (the vehicle designated as the NBC Recon Vehicle). Each one cost $7-8 million each, over twice what the older M93A1 NBCRS "Fox" cost (which it is replacing). We're buying nearly 7000 Joint Chemical Agent Detectors, and more each year through the POM at about $4000 each. The CBDP spent years and more than $100 million developing BAE's ChemSentry to be the JCAD before they gave up and went to Smith Detection's Lightweight Chemical Detector as the candidate. Finally, the Joint "Light" NBC Recon System (it's actually very heavy) is finally rolling out after a four-year delay. Seven Heavy HMMWVs and six LAVs will have the new equipment. Yes, it's duplicative of the Stryker NBCRV but the Strykers can get built faster.

In individual protective equipment, lots of masks - 7122 Joint Service Aircrew Masks (JSAM) costing about $3000 each, and 18,248 disposable Joint Service Chemical Environment Survivability Mask (JSCESM)costing $130 each. The JSAM are for all fixed wing pilots, while the Air Force decided that the program needed to buy them a second mask (instead of using O&M funds as it should). The main program buy is 176,007 Joint Service General Purpose Masks (JSGPM), which will replace both the M40 and the older MCU2/P masks at a cost of $170 each. Overall, there isn't a large improvement in capability, but it is slightly better than the two predecessor masks and it will offer one standard mask for all ground combatants.

Now the CBDP isn't supposed to buy consumable items, but the services bullied OSD into ignoring the public law and buying them lots of JSLIST protective suits, boots and gloves ($39 million worth) and Joint Protective Aircrew Ensembles (JPACE). The ground suits cost about $250 a pop, while the aviator version cost twice that. That's because aviators have to look good in protective suits, and they need pockets for their pens and sunglasses. In the vaccine area, the CBDP is procuring 1.43 million anthrax vaccine doses at about $26 each and 1.25 million smallpox vaccine doses at about $4 each. In a few years, DoD will be buying plague vaccine as well. It's starting to get really expensive to buy these doses for the total force every year, and some are suggesting DOD procure vaccine doses for military dependents as well.

In the information systems, there are three products - Joint Effects Model (hazard prediction), Joint Warning and Reporting Network (the communication backbone), and Joint Operational Effects Federation (for data management). Most of the procurement funds are going to make CDs to send the first products out to the field. It's amazingly small amounts of money ($14 million across all three products) for a "network-centric" military. Bottom line, the old-time CBDP people still focus on detectors and protective suits as the favored children over hazard prediction models.

The CBDP is continuing to buy Karcher decon systems as its Joint Service Transportable Decon System (Small Scale) - 338 systems at $24,ooo each, plus DF200 decontaminants. After the Army's government-produced system M21/M22 Modular Decon System wasn't accepted (and not deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom), it turned to industry for the solution. Again. In 2009, we might see the first buys of the Joint Service Sensitive Equipment Decon System - 52 systems at $80,000 a pop. These systems are way, way overdue, but critical if we're ever to clean up after a CB warfare event.

The medics wanted collective protection for their field hospitals and forward aid stations, so they're getting the Chemical Protective Deployable Medical System (CP DEPMEDS) for about $1.5 million each. The CB Protective System (CBPS), which is installed in medical HMMWVs, costs about $1.2 million each - we're getting 21 systems in 2008. The Navy convinced OSD to give it money back in the late 1990s to install collective protection systems in its amphibious ships and hospital ships. Next year, the USS Makin Island will get its collective protection for only $10.5 million. The Navy keeps getting money for this purpose (for which it ought to be paying for itself) through FY 2009. No one else seems to value collective protection for fixed and semi-permenant sites, strangely enough.

I'm going on too long, but let me just note the PM Guardian's fine efforts for installation protection. For the past year (and this year going through next year), the program's been buying gear for the installation response teams. Each base gets eight DFU-200 air samplers, two chemical point detectors, three chemical agent monitors, six radiation detectors, and assorted other gear. In 2006, 50 bases received this gear. In 2007 they plan to drop this at 17 sites, and in 2008, at 15 sites more. So in 2008, we're going to see 15 sites get a limited amount of CB defense gear, some comm connectivity, and exercises for $86.4 million. Read the description in the P-forms, and you'd never know what an insufficient capability is actually being provided. This isn't a protection effort, it's augmenting the response capability.

Hell of a program. But no one said that passive defense was at the top of any priority lists. "Combating WMD" means air and missile defense, special operations, and interdiction missions. My personal observation - field grade officers are making poor procurement decisions to which the general/flag officers pay little attention, because it benefits their respective services to do so (and I include the Army in this). They're not going to change until there's an actual attack and people die from CB weapons, and that's the real shame of it all.

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

Inside the Pentagon's Chem-Bio Budget

The Defense Department's chem-bio defense budget (CBDP) only accounts for less than one percent of what the U.S. military spends. But there's still a lot to pore over. I thought that I would give an overview today, talk about procurement tomorrow, and talk about RDT&E on Thursday. (Go to the Defense Department Comptroller's web site for fiscal year 2008 and access the procurement and RDT&E programs, to find the appropriate documents.)

Overall, the DoD CBDP will obligate $1.63 billion dollars in FY 2008 against 40-odd acquisition projects and other efforts. That's a bit less than one percent of the DoD modernization budget for that year. Breaking it down, the CBDP will spend:

• $609.6 million for science and technology (37.4 percent)

• $381.9 million for advanced research and development (23.5 percent)

• $543.8 million for procurement (33.4 percent)

• $93.6 million for management functions (5.7 percent)

The services were a bit snippy about this budget because of the spending pattern - R&D spending is twice that of procurement, which means they don't get as many toys. It's a trend that continues through the 2008-2013 Program Objective Memorandum (POM), which is the Pentagon's five year spending plan. Part of this is because of Rumsfeld's direction to "assume risk in the short term" in order to invest more in out-year future tech. The other part is because most, if not all, of the CB defense projects (detection in particular) have slipped their fielding dates by several years (for several reasons, most involving poor management), forcing a move of funds into R&D (lest they be taken away).

Medical biological countermeasures is the obvious favorite in the program this year (see breakout of funds by area here). You can thank the DOD vaccine program (anthrax and smallpox vaccine buys) and the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI) for that. The vaccine program is spending about $48 million in 2008, while TMTI is spending $248 million in tech base and $69 million in advanced R&D. Both programs' costs will continue to climb through 2013. The TMTI is the latest "good idea" from OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], where DoD is basically sending a hell of a lot of money to industry to find "silver bullets" - a therapeutic that will address a broad range of BW threats, instead of a "single vaccine-single disease" approach.

This ambitious project is the latest Holy Grail for CBDP. In the late 1990s, the program promised free protective suits and vaccines for everyone. Then it was stand-off biological detection in 2000-2001. In 2002, OSD decided that every military base should have CB defense gear for antiterrorism, and threw a billion dollars at that problem. Now it's the terrorist BW threat, combined with the worry of "genetically engineered" BW agents, that drives OSD's "good idea" effort. Funny as in tragic. The installation protection effort started in 2004 (PM Guardian) got half its funds taken to kick-start TMTI, had to be reorganized, and is trying to get back on track. More on PM Guardian's failures later.

We're not going to see anything from TMTI for several years though. First, as a warning shot, Congress took $90 million of TMTI money from the DOD CBDP FY07 budget because there was no business plan other than "throw money at industry." Now a plan has been put together, and they're hiring lots of managers. But as with all medical research projects, and this one in particular, there's not going to be a final product ready for FDA approval for six to ten years, if we're lucky. But it's really, really important! To OSD leadership, not the warfighter, mind you.

In general, the DOD CBDP priorities run like this - chem-bio detection, protective suits and masks, and medical biological countermeasures. The funds left over go to CB defense information systems, medical chemical countermeasures, collective protection systems and decontamination systems. This has been pretty much the same profile for both R&D and procurement since 1995, which is funny since both Gulf Wars (1991 and 2003) showed that our forces really have no effective CB defense information systems, collective protection, or decon capability for most of our operational units or fixed sites.

Test and evaluation efforts have recently been called out in a separate budget line. Nearly $67 million is going to projects to modernize test and evaluation capabilities at Dugway Proving Ground, Edgewood, Dahlgren, and other test sites. The aging test infrastructure was one reason why new CB defense equipment has been delayed. Hard to tell when - or if - this funding is going to get the projects back on schedule. Another $54 million in management funds goes to Dugway every year to pay for salaries and other T&E needs. Past CBDP management funds were kept down to 4 to 4.5 percent of the total program costs, but that's bounced up to 5.8 percent (and rising) due to OSD deciding it's going to spend more on studies and upgrading service laboratories. This management slice also doesn't reflect the R&D funds spent at DTRA CB and the Joint Program Executive Office on managing projects directly.

More information can be found at the OSD office site in its annual report to Congress on CB defense.

UPDATE 02/14/07: Analysis from Dick Destiny.

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

BioShield Has BioFailed

The Washington Post has this article on the BioShield program. It's a bit of a scorecard on the four-year old program, and the score doesn't look good for homeland security. Let's take a look, agent by agent.

• Old Anthrax Treatment: "As the result of an effort that began before BioShield, there are enough antibiotics in the national stockpile to treat 40 million people for more than 60 days, HHS says. Stockpiles also include 9 million doses of an anthrax vaccine produced by Emergent BioSolutions of Gaithersburg, with another 1 million to be delivered by the first quarter of this year." You might know "Emergent BioSolutions" better as BioPort - the controversial supplier of anthrax vaccine to the Defense Department.

• New Anthrax Treatment: "The agency is struggling to develop a more modern anthrax vaccine that could be administered in fewer doses and with fewer side effects. In 2004, the agency tapped a small California firm, VaxGen, for an $877 million contract to deliver 75 million doses of an anthrax vaccine. VaxGen encountered delays and technical problems, and HHS canceled the contract in December after the firm failed to begin human testing on time." VaxGen just laid off half its force and its CEO resigned.

• Botulinum Antitoxin: "Cangene has begun delivering the first of 200,000 doses of an antitoxin, which would have to be delivered shortly after patients show symptoms to counteract the effects of the toxin. There are currently no plans to pursue a vaccine, according to HHS." Bot tox is not really a mass casualty agent, more of an assassination tool. Not sure the victims will know what they have prior to... ah, dying. Not sure why this is even in the stockpile.

• Smallpox: "There is a stockpile of more than 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine, enough for everyone in the United States, according to HHS. That effort began before BioShield." Good news - lots of vaccine. Bad news - this is the old smallpox vaccine, which has odds on killing people who take it. No work for a new smallpox vaccine is underway.

• Potassium Iodide: "Enough potassium iodide to treat 1 million people is already in the national stockpile, according to HHS. Potassium iodide doesn't treat most aspects of radiation exposure, but scientists believe it can protect the thyroid gland from cancer in such an attack." Great! Now we don't have to worry about stunted growth! Does nothing for the rest of your irradiated body, though.

• Plague and Ebola: "Despite President Bush's mention of plague and Ebola in his State of the Union speech, the government has yet to contract with any company to produce a defense. HHS officials say the implementation plan to be issued in the next few months will include a roadmap to address both threats. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health is pursuing research on vaccines for both. NIH has completed the first phase of human testing for the Ebola version and is seeking volunteers for the second, according to an NIH official, who said it would be several years before it could be stockpiled."

So how's your scorecard look? Four years ago, President Bush announced BioShield as key initiative of the "Biodefense Strategy for the 21st Century." It took two years just to get the legislative language into shape. Four years later, we're still not much better than we were before 9/11. The administration's homeland security policy for medical biological countermeasures has failed.

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

UPDATE: I failed to consider the British company Acambis work on a new, safer smallpox vaccine. It's in an IND status, not approved for general non-emergency use. I don't think that the R&D work is being funded through BioShield, however. They've been working on the vaccine for several years, with a large international customer base in mind.

Pharma Hearts Big BARDA

And who wouldn't love a seven-foot Amazonian woman leading the Female Furies to save the day? Oh, we're not talking about the DC comics book character "Big BARDA"? It's also the name of a new Department of Health and Human Service's (DHHS) effort? Well, we can talk about that, too.

Last Thursday, the Senate approved legislation within the "Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act" (S. 3678) to create a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA). This particular legislation has been in the works for about two years as Congress has tried to address industry gripes about Project BioShield, the DHHS effort intended to fastrack industry's development and fielding of medical countermeasures used in the response to a terrorist CBRN incident.

The biggest challenge to the U.S. government has been to encourage industry to make drugs that may never be used, and if given out in large quantities during an emergency, may be misused or abused by the general public and/or panicky emergency responders. Big Pharma took a look at the risks, the liability insurance needed, and the profit margin, and said "no thanks, we'll stick to curing male impotence issues." However, little brother Pharma (the small start-up labs struggling to break out) said "give us an indemnification agreement against future liability suits and make it worth our while and we'll talk." In short, that's what BARDA's role will be.

The legislation is much more pretty-sounding. It says the DHHS Secretary will “coordinate the acceleration of countermeasure and product advanced research and development” by:

- facilitating collaboration between DHHS and other agencies, industry, academia, and other persons, with respect to such advanced research and development;
- promoting countermeasure and product advanced research and development;
- facilitating contacts between interested persons and the offices or employees authorized by the Secretary to advise such persons regarding requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; and
- promoting innovation to reduce the time and cost of countermeasure and product advanced research and development

The legislation also authorizes BARDA to execute a $1 billion budget, and it limits any disclosure of “specific technical data or scientific information that is created or obtained during the countermeasure and product advanced research and development carried out under subsection (c) that reveals significant and not otherwise publicly known vulnerabilities of existing medical or public health defense against biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological threats.” That means FOIA or FACA requests would not apply to BARDA working groups or the National Biodefense Science Board.

That part is a little controversial, and was one of the main reasons why it's taken Congress two years to actually try to improve Project BioShield. DHHS has awarded a few procurement contracts for anthrax vaccines, a botulinum toxin antiviral, and potassium iodide, but not much else. This legislation will enable BARDA to "help" industry through the long, expensive process of making other vaccines, ones that probably won't have too much use outside of emergency response to the very low probability of bioterrorism incidents. Needless to say, industry loves this idea and can't wait for the House to agree to the words and print this baby into law.

Passage by the U.S. Senate of this bill, which includes critical BARDA provisions and provisions to reauthorize bioterrorism grants, is an important and necessary step toward improving America's defenses against bioterrorism and pandemic diseases.

This legislation recognizes that the 'Valley of Death' remains a barrier to effective countermeasure product development, and authorizes the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within the Department of Health and Human Services. Through BARDA, contracts and grants for advanced research and development will be made to companies working on products to protect the American people. The bill also contains important contract reforms that improve upon the advances made under Project BioShield, by allowing, for example, milestone payments and surge capacity provisions to improve the viability and sustainability of biodefense product development and manufacture.

Significantly, the Senate-passed bill contains strong funding levels and important provisions to permit competing companies to cooperatively respond to government-declared emergencies without violating antitrust laws.

The "Valley of Death" refers to the time period between industry's drug development and the FDA's approval of the drug. The current BioShield legislation doesn't award any federal funds until the industry firm is producing the actual approved drug, and the small pharma firms just don't have the investments to make it that long. Thus, like a superhero racing to the rescue, comes Big BARDA!

- Jason Sigger

Real Korea Worry: Chem-Bio

North Korea's newly-tested nuke is bad news, for sure. But the bigger worry, says Popular Mechanics is the "huge arsenal of mass casualty weapons" that Kim & Co. have been assembling for 45 years: biological and chemical arms.

While it would be foolish not to be gravely concerned about North Korea's purported development of an offensive nuclear capability, the actual threat for the foreseeable future is, arguably, minimal. North Korea's threadbare economy (it has a GDP of $40 billion - compare that to California's gross state product on $1.55 trillion per year) is incapable of maintaining an effective nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear science is at best second rate and, certainly, is second hand.

In contrast, as one North Korea expert explained to me, CBW is mass destruction on the cheap. "Biological and chemical weapons are very inexpensive, many, many times cheaper than nuclear." Another expert gave this grim assessment: "The use of anthrax is a distinct possibility for this nation [North Korea]..."

The consensus among weapons inspectors, intelligence analysts, academics and others I have interviewed—–which is backed up by the available open source material—-is that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague and botulism toxin as weapons and has extensively researched at least six other germs including smallpox and typhoid. It is also believed to have 5,000 tons or more of mustard gas, sarin nerve agent and phosgene (a choking gas). The Center for Nonproliferation Studies says North Korea ranks "amongst the largest possessors of chemical weaponry in the world." South Korea's military estimates half of North's long-range missiles and 30 percent of its artillery are CBW capable...

Yet the West's myopic obsession with North Korea's nuclear efforts has allowed this far more real and equally lethal threat to escape into the shadows: a WMD program, backed by in excess of 13,000 specially trained troops, capable of devastating its southern neighbor, attacking U.S. troops in Asia and disrupting the regional economy in ways that could see the U.S. and other western nations plunged into crisis.

Yes, the new [United Nations] resolution 1718(2006) includes a reference to biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, but only as an afterthought, and the resolution exists only because of the nukes and their perceived threat. Unfortunately, in this case, as with others, the world is overly focused on a potential retina-searing nuclear detonation, without properly appreciating the very clear-and-present CBW killer that exists just a virtual button's push away from Kim Jong Il's perfectly manicured fingernails.

If the whole thing sounds a little hysterical to you, chem-bio guru Jason Sigger says: get real. The story is "100 percent right in regards to N. Korea. And you can extend that argument to China, Iran, Syria, Israel, Pakistan, and India, and potentially in the near future (because of Iran), Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others."

Seriously, I see this all the time in the "combating WMD" community. The arms control and counterproliferation people talk "WMD" but the subtext is "nuke." Even the majority of the consequence management tasks are now "dirty bomb" or "improvised nuclear device" scenarios... [the] mentality is [that] nukes are the only thing that can drastically affect US military power in any region of the world.

But there are other threats, too.

BioShield: Bad News

This story about "Project BioShield," the government's botched effort to build up a vaccine supply against anthrax and other bioterror threats, is a nice wrap-up of one of the administration's most troubled homeland security efforts (and that's saying a lot). But the story also kind of misses, or at least sidesteps, the point.

Since it was introduced in 2003, the core of the BioShield program has been a slow-motion trainwreck. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to get this new supply of vaccine -- with few results to show for it.

But the real tragedy may be in the billions of research dollars BioShield is twisting around. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is now spending "$1.7 billion on biodefense -- up from just $42 million in 2001 -- out of a $4.3 billion budget," Time noted earlier in the year. That's to fight bioagents which are really, really hard to turn into weapons -- and even when they are weaponized, don't kill all that many. Remember the 2001 anthrax attack? Five people dead. "Compare that to a real biological killer, like tuberculosis," I suggested in a 2003 Tech Central Station article.

It ends the life of more than 2 million people every year. But the federal government is "luring researchers away" from scientific research into TB and other infections of mass destruction, notes... the Federation of American Scientists.

UCLA's Dr. Marcus Howritz was "on the cusp of real progress" in developing a better TB vaccine... Now he's been diverted into working on a barely-lethal biological agent.

Nancy Connell, who heads a Pentagon-funded bio-defense lab in Newark, NJ, doesn't think a biological strike is all that likely. But she takes grants to study smallpox and anthrax, because she can use the same research funds to work on flu and TB, which "actually do kill people," she notes.

But the redirection of resources may not be the worst part. It's where all this semi-questionable research is happening that's truly spooky. The government is funding the construction of a bazillion new "hot zone" labs, packed with the deadliest of biothreats. And it's these labs that are the most likely sources of an outbreak. Because safety at these places ain't exactly iron-clad. Three Boston University lab workers were infected with tularemia, or rabbit fever, back in January, 2005. Nine months later, plague-ridden mice escaped from Connell's lab in New Jersey. Thanks, BioShield.

Iraq's Biowar Labs: Mystery Solved?

Okay, just when you thought that the whole Curveball-Iraqi biological weapons story couldn't get any weirder, it does. Milton Leitenberg of the Center for International Security Studies has provided me with the exclusive third (and last) part of the story behind the story of the alleged Iraqi mobile biological warfare labs. In Part 1, he revealed that in 2001 the U.S. government had fabricated a "mobile BW lab" for the purposes of training SOCOM operatives on how to identify and exploit an adversary's BW production facility. In Part 2, Leitenberg discusses how a U.S. contractor developed the now infamous graphics of an Iraqi mobile BW lab - not based on any existing mobile BW lab or any hard intel from Curveball, but rather based on "the processes he [Curveball] described," which were "assessed by an independent laboratory as workable engineering designs."

In Part 3, Leitenberg completes the full riddle inside the enigma within a mystery. It may be that we can trace back the idea of a mobile BW laboratory to Scott Ritter during his tour of duty in Iraq in 1998 with UNSCOM. Ritter was trying to obtain information from the Iraqi National Congress, specifically on Iraq's intelligence agencies and WMD program. In 1998, he talked to Ahmed Chalabi about his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical or biological weapons labs, which would explain the UNSCOM's lack of success in finding any evidence. In late 1999-2000, Curveball - the brother of a top lieutenant to Ahmed Chalabi - starts talking to the German intelligence about mobile Iraqi BW labs, who forwards this information to the CIA. At the same time, Chalabi is talking to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith about the danger of Iraq's "WMD program."

So here we have a rumor started by a former U.S. marine supporting a UN inspection team, where he passes the idea to Chalabi, who passes it to German intel and U.S. defense officials, both of whom pass the story to the CIA. The agency develops graphics drawn by a U.S. contractor based on Curveball's story and might have known of the mock-up BW lab built for SOCOM, both of which "confirms" the concept that Iraqi mobile BW labs exist, which leads to SecState Powell's speech at the UN in February 2003 and the media's echo chamber agreeing with the president that there's enough evidence to go to war against Iraq.

And as a bonus at the end of this short paper, Leitenberg reveals that Scott Ritter was pulled into a British intelligence op called "Operation Mass Appeal" run by MI6 in 1997. The purpose of "Operation Mass Appeal" was to leak weak and not "actionable" data about Iraq's WMD program to the media, who would fall upon it like hungry wolves and keep alive the public impression that Saddam had an active WMD program, despite the lack of official government endorsement. Leitenberg notes that the disinformation operation functioned similar to the DOD Office of Special Plans, but didn't involve disinformation regarding the Iraqi mobile BW production vehicles.

Call George Clooney. I've got his next movie plot all ready.

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

It's Still Not Chemical Warfare - Israeli Edition

Back in November, a good-sized chunk of the press and blogosphere got all a-twitter about the American use of "chemical weapons" -- never mind that the munitions the Army used were anything but.

Now, we've got ourselves a new variation on the argument. This one comes from Wayne Madsen, who blogged his belief that Israeli military forces are using a dual-purpose fuel-air explosive/chemical munition in Lebanon (see his entry on July 23). Seems he's sold on the fact that one man can pick up the munition, clearly demonstrating that it is filled with a gas and not a liquid (plus some gruesome corpse photos).

The claim was all too easy to shoot down on general chem warfare principles. But it has been joined by other news sources (see here, here, and here). Most of the reports mistakenly believe that these are phosphorus munitions, similar to the stories of U.S. forces' use in Fallujah, mostly because of the blackened nature of the casualties' skin. Sadly, these reports are mistaken; the munitions aren't even phosphorus-filled.

The Defense Update has the story on this military system. It is indeed a minefield breaching system, called "Carpet," currently in use by the Israeli army and will be fielded with the French army next year. Not much imagination as to the name and its function: the armored vehicle that is the weapon platform can fire up to 20 rockets in a rapid squence for minefield breaching. The force of the FAE blast clears nearly all mines, regardless of terrain, foliage or man-made obstacles.

Pre-programmed for automatic, semi-automatic or manual operation, Carpet is operated remotely from inside the vehicle’s compartment, under cover from enemy fire. The system can also be reloaded rapidly in the forward area. Unlike the Vipers, firing line charges across the minefields, Carpet rockets contain only liquid fuel which is flammable but not explosive in regular operating conditions. Therefore, if Carpet rockets are hit in their canisters, they do not cause any danger to the system, vehicle or nearby troops.

Fully loaded, the Carpet launcher weighs only 3.5 tons. It can carry up to 20 x 265 mm rockets, each weighing 46 kg. Fully functional training rockets can also be fired with the system for training exercises, safely simulating the entire operation (without fuel-air explosion). The system can be towed, mounted on the rear of the armored fighting vehicle (as shown on the IDF Puma AFV at EuroSatory 2002) or installed inside an APC. The IDF used the Carpet during the war in Lebanon, neutralizing and clearing Hezbollah strongholds near the Israeli- Lebanese border. (See video here)

Only one newspaper I found - South Africa's Star - correctly identified the one potential violation of the international law banning the use of incendiaries against noncombatants, rather than the more popular accusation that Israel was using "chemical weapons" in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (to which Israel isn't a party, anyway). Comment from the Israeli army? "We use only weapons and ammunition which will best hit our targets and cause least collateral damage," said army spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal. Yep. FAEs are very powerful conventional weapons, but they aren't toxic chemical weapons.

-- Jason Sigger, Armchair Generalist

Subway Attack "Mostly Psychological"

In the Time article about the aborted attack on New York's subways, construction of Al-Qaeda's chemical bomb -- which supposedly combines sodium cyanide and hydrochloric acid -- is called "the equivalent of splitting the atom."

Uh, not really, experts are answering.

Globalsecurity.org's George Smith says that shows an "uneasy grasp of the science."

The reaction of hydrochloric acid, a common reagent... and sodium cyanide is... is not equivalent to splitting the atom... It indicates someone who was not a scientist or perhaps knowledgeable on the fine details, if there are any.

"This type of attack, whether the assailant realizes it or not, is going to be mostly psychological," an ordnance specialist adds.

Simply allowing the chemicals to intermingle without efficiently mixing them will not produce an effective chemical weapon. Even if it does, by some stroke of luck, emit a substantial amount of HCN, immediately leaving the exposed area and getting fresh air will limit its effects. HCN has never really been used as a weapon because of this; its only documented use was by the Nazis during WWII in their genocide chambers.

There is the possibility that a couple people may have an especially bad reaction and succumb to the effects of the chemical (as happened in Japan's subway system a couple years ago). Overall, the fear and lack of security it instills into the public's minds will be the greatest lasting effect.

Chem Attacks Still Tough to Spot

By now, you've probably heard about the nightmare scenario that almost came true: Al-Qaeda's aborted plot to release hydrogen cyanide into the New York City subway system. What you haven't heard much about are the systems to sniff out chemical weapons that are placed throughout New York's underground trains. And you probably won't, any time soon. Chemical weapon (CW) detection is really, really hard to do.

The U.S. military, for example, has been working on CW sensors for years. The systems are still awfully finicky. Take the CAM ("Chemical Agent Monitor"), which is used throughout the American armed services. The CAM relies on a technique called ion mobility spectroscopy. The machine sucks vapor samples in through a nozzle. Then it zaps the air with a radioactive material, like americium-241, sends its through an electrical field, and, finally, to an ion detector. The substance is identified by the amount of time it takes to run this little gauntlet. The problem is, breath mints, burning grass, and ammonia all set the machine off. So does diesel exhaust, noted Andrew Wolf, a chemist with the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command.

These military systems only get more confused in the subways, where there are "5-10 times the amount of particulates in [the] air as compared to the air above ground," CW specialist Jason Sigger noted here last year.

But even if these sensors worked perfectly, they might not be all that helpful. CAMs are hand-held machines that have to be right in the area of a chemical agent, in order to pick up any traces of it. (Area air-scooper are practically useless as chemical warning systems.) Which means a cop would have to get luckily enough to wave his sensor right at a chemical bomber in order to catch him. Even a weapon at the opposite end of a subway platform would probably go unnoticed.

That hasn't stopped the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority from recently ordering up ion mobility spectrometers for themselves. Despite a slew of new, exotic detectors coming out of the national labs and industry, the choices for sensing chemical weapons still aren't all that great.

UPDATE 06/19/06 9:11 AM: "Using hydrogen cyanide, a toxic inhalation hazard, would certainly scare a lot of people just because it's a chemical. But because it can be smelled and it dissipates quite rapidly, it's not a great threat in small amounts," Jason Sigger notes. "A pistol would be as effective. It's good in a sense to hear of these incidents - it shows a much more clear example of what terrorist chemical incidents really are. They're a hazard, a threat just like any high explosive device or gun-waving nut, but not a WMD incident."

To Christian Beckner, "this story also raises questions about what we’re doing to protect the nation’s mass transit systems."

Last year the Congress appropriated $150 million for rail and mass-transit grants for FY 2006, via the Transit Security Grant Program. We’re now nine months into FY 2006, and DHS hasn’t even begun to distribute a penny of this $150 million (or if they have, they haven’t advertised it). That’s unacceptable.

It Plays the New DVDs, Too

The June edition of National Defense has this short tech talk article about a new chem-bio detector produced by Purdue University. If successful, it could be a useful tool for people searching bags or containers for chem-bio agents or as a quick forensic tool at a terrorist chem-bio incident.

Miniature chemical-biological detection devices, that in the future could be deployed in wireless networks to protect buildings, subways and airports, have been perfected by scientists from Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind.

Prototypes of the handheld mass spectrometers — called Mini 10s — are able to quickly identify traces of the triacetone triperoxide that was used in the London subway bombing and is found in many improvised explosive devices. Many other materials, including TNT and plastic explosives, have been tagged.

Test results are produced in seconds, which compares to the current method of collecting samples and then dispatching them to a laboratory for identification.

It may be slightly premature to run out and place stocks into this product's future manufacturer, though. What the National Defense article didn't mention, but the researchers admit, is that this is just a prototype design that could use a few more years of testing and design work.

Sampling is done with a long, tubelike wand that both delivers the gas and sucks up the resulting ionized compound. It is this wand that the team likens to their bloodhound’s new nose. The wand’s tip must come within 5 millimeters of the sample to be effective, but the group has also found a way to build a mass spectrometer that weighs about 18 kilograms (40 pounds), which means it can be carried to the sample, rather than forcing investigators to bring the sample to it.

"This backpack-size device will be useful for field analysis of chemicals, filling a need in airport baggage security and drug detection," said Wiseman, a graduate student working on the project. "While the technique obviously cannot look inside packages to see what is inside, residue from explosives and drugs often remains on the hands of whoever packed it, and some is transferred during handling to the package’s surface. That remaining residue is what this device will be good for detecting."

While the team is optimistic about the device’s potential for application in the lab and on the street, Gologan cautioned that a better understanding of its functioning was still needed.

Still, it's an interesting concept. I would hazard a guess that the military's laboratories are too focused on developing future gear for military combat operations - not that anything new has come out of the DOD's Chemical-Biological Defense Program for a few years now - and DHS's laboratories have relied too much on unrealistic R&D projects from the National Labs to have any new equipment, either. Good to see that we have universities and industry to rely on for future combating terrorist WMD tools.

-- Jason Sigger, Armchair Generalist

NBC Reconnaissance Vehicles -- Coming Soon

I hadn't seen a picture of the Stryker NBC Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV), but now it's up at a few sites now (here and here). Word is that General Dynamics got the contract in January to start modifying the basic Stryker chassis to manufacture 17 NBCRVs under a low rate initial production contract for test and evaluation through FY2007.

This Army Chemical Review article offers more details on the advances of this system over the existing M91A1 NBC Recon System (Fox), including an upgraded chemical standoff sensor (you can make it out -- it's to the left of the remote weapons system in the picture), a biological agent detector, a CB mass spectrometer for sampling, and of course, the standard chemical and radiological point detectors. Plus there's the advantage of having a standard military vehicle instead of a German vehicle (which was always tough to get spare parts and maintenance for).

This might be the last dedicated Army NBC recon vehicle for a long time. Currently, there are no plans to have a Future Combat Systems NBC recon variant. Rather, the proposed FCS recon and surveillance vehicle will include the NBC defense systems, and one would hope that the chemical specialists would be an integral part of the future scout platoons. No offense to the infantry, but the scouts I knew had trouble keeping their protective masks clean, let alone operating sophisticated CB defense sensors.

--Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

Chem Plant Security Gets Serious

There are 15,000 chemical plants scattered around the country. A third of them are near major population centers. The estimated casualty counts if any of them were struck are utterly catastrophic. And there's no federal plan -- not even federal guidelines -- to secure these facilities. The chemical industry has been "reluctant to accept... security requirements" from Washington, Global Security Newswire notes. And, for the longest time, Washington didn't want the power to do so. "Unlike EPA, for example, which requires drinking water facilities to improve their security," notes a recent Congressional report, "DHS [Department of Homeland Security] does not have the authority to require chemical facilities to assess their vulnerabilities and implement security measures."

But there's been an "unusual turnabout by the Bush administration," the Times reports. "It is now lobbying for regulations that senior administration officials worked privately to block shortly after the 2001 attacks, saying then that voluntary measures would be sufficient."

In his speech Tuesday, at a forum sponsored by George Washington University and the American Chemistry Council, a trade group, [DHS secretary Michael Chertoff] said the regulations should be most stringent for plants that, because of the amount and danger of their chemical stockpiles or their proximity to urban areas, pose the greatest risks.

But he said the nation should have uniform standards, strongly implying that states should not be allowed to adopt their own rules, as New Jersey did late last year, particularly if those rules were more stringent.

He also said private-sector, "third party" inspectors could check on compliance, similar to the way accountants certify corporate financial compliance for the government.

Chertoff used the speech to endorse a chemical security bill, backed by Senator Susan Collins, that's currently making its way through Congress. According to IBM homeland security analyst Christian Beckner -- who's my go-to guy on these matters -- it's "sensible legislation that requires all parties to make compromises and can deliver the level of security that we need."

That is, if it can get passed. Beckner "walked away from the event feeling less confident about whether the key parties are actually ready to actually make these compromises, or whether they would rather hold out for legislation that meets more or all of their key demands."

Hopefully my gut intuition is wrong here, and we will instead see a sensible compromise in the weeks ahead and a bill signed into law in the next few months. Any failure to move forward on this legislation is unacceptably dangerous for our national security.

UPDATE 10:22 AM: Read the AP's account of Chertoff's talk, and you'll get the feeling that the wire service's reporter was at an entirely different speech.

He said the government would not set minimum standards for chemical companies to follow, allowing the industry to tailor its own "so we can go about the objective of raising our security in a way that doesn't destroy the businesses we're trying to protect."

"There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and we're going to let chemical operators figure out the right way, as long as the cat gets skinned," Chertoff said...

Critics said the proposal relies too much on the chemical industry to police itself.

"It's a lot like putting a 'Beware of dog' sign out in the yard but not actually buying a guard dog," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. He said federal regulations should spell out minimum protections against different kinds of terror attacks, adding that the use of outside auditors was like "having the private sector grade the industry's homework."

Is That a Chem-Bio Munition?

The UK magazine New Scientist caught a hot tip from sources within the U.S. patent world. Seems that a team of individuals invented a new type of rifle grenade (image shown is actually an old Canadian rifle grenade), and the U.S. Army applied for the patent for the munition. Presumably the individuals worked for the government, and I might suspect their agency is associated with the Ordnance Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Problem here is how they described the munition...

There is the need to deliver and disperse a payload comprising an aerosol-forming substance without the use of high-explosives, the formation of shrapnel and shock wave. In addition, the devices for rapid dispersion and delivery must be capable of being readily launched from exiting conventional rifle muzzles, while providing efficient and effective target accuracy and range. Furthermore, the projectile is adapted for delivering a range of payloads while inflicting minimal injury and damage near or around target areas.

In the same manner, there is also a need for delivering non-aerosol payloads or articles, including. but not limited to, flash grenades, concussion grenades, nets, noise generators, stun balls, tire puncturing elements, electromagnetic pulse generators, mines or bomblets, listening devices, signal emitting objects, unmanned aerial vehicles, biological/chemical agents, and the like for efficient, rapid dispersal and delivery.

The patent actually makes this point four times in print. Oops! As New Scientist points out, developing munitions for the purpose of disseminating CB warfare agents is, well, against international treaty these days. The Army is reportedly trying to withdraw the offending words, but can it really take three years (it was filed in February 2003)?

My two cents - I don't think that the government is deliberately developing munitions to deliver CB warfare agents - I think a few enterprising government civilians designed the munition to be multi-purpose, and one possible purpose would be to deliver riot control agents or pepper spray (or any other non-lethal aerosol out there). They didn't think it through, and now it's in print. Rather than offend the arms control community and get the lawyers all excited, the U.S. government's trying to correct the situation. But still - hardly the thing you'd want to have floating around the internet. It's not like this government needs the bad publicity and the mistaken impression of flaunting international treaties...

Hat tip to Saurabh and Saheli!

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

Bioweapons Spread: Scare?

On Tuesday, I linked to a Technology Review article, "The Knowledge," about the accelerating spread of bioweapons gear and know-how. The story has touched off a big debate in the community that tracks biological threats. So I thought I'd give SUNY Purchase environmental science professor (and long time bioweapons researcher) Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation's scientists working group -- a chance to respond.

1. [The story's lead example, Russian bioweapons researcher Serguei] Popov, is a convenient tool for raising a number of ideas that have been around for awhile, and not just in Russia. The BWC [Biological Weapons Convention] does not prohibit research, and the US has been doing some of the same sorts of things for at least 20 years.

2. Terrorists would have to be crazy to spend time and other resources on long-term BW agent development, risking detection without any certainty of success. They don’t need MORE virulent agents. They don’t need to synthesize agents. Anthrax can be isolated from cowfields all over the place. Unless and until real defenses against the standard agents are universal, the latter will do the job. ( And an even better job is done by explosives. ) The agent is just the first, easiest, step. Weaponization and delivery are harder. Testing is required if they don’t want to fizzle. Testing is much more likely than genetic engineering to be detected.

3. If terrorists actually wanted novel BW agents, the way to get them is to buy/steal/infiltrate a biodefense lab, as [Rutgers researcher Richard] Ebright says.

4. The most notable information in the article is the description by Popov of how he was co-opted into working on BW, drawn in without at first knowing it until his career, his income and his future depended on it. To say nothing of patriotism. There are similar stories from S. Africa. Would a scientists’ “code of conduct” have mattered?

5. Interesting that the article brings up “pacification of a subject population” and other modification of behavior with “non-lethal” weapons. This is a very popular research topic in a lot of countries these days, especially since the Moscow theater hostage event -- the Manchurian Candidate concept, essentially. [Harvard University molecular biology professor Matthew] Meselson has been fighting this for years. Tell the public, please, that this kind of research is likely to be turned against themselves, ultimately, rather than terrorists.

As for terrorists developing such things — I don’t see why they would even want them. But if they did, they would know where to get them. Let’s stop focusing our fears on hypothetical terrorists, when governments are actually preparing the tools!

Bioweapons Getting Simple, Cheap?

I've been a skeptic of the bio-terror threat for a long time, now. The weapons seemed awfully finicky, compared to old-fashioned explosives. And the learning curve to acquiring these bugs and viruses looked steep, for a relatively low-tech operation like Al Qaeda.

Now, I'm less sure. In this month's Technology Review there's an article on the spread of bioweapons gear and know-how that's downright spooky, even to skeptics like me.

It starts with the Soviet bioweapons effort:

When the program was founded in the 1970s, its goal was to enhance classical agents of biological warfare for heightened pathogenicity and resistance to antibiotics; by the 1980s, it was creating new species of designer pathogens that would induce entirely novel symptoms in their victims...

The Russians' achievements tell us what is possible. At least some of what the Soviet bioweaponeers did with difficulty and expense can now be done easily and cheaply. And all of what they accomplished can be duplicated with time and money. We live in a world where gene-sequencing equipment bought secondhand on eBay and unregulated biological material delivered in a FedEx package provide the means to create biological weapons.

The article then goes on to describe some might scary weapons, including one that "in effect triggered rapid multiple sclerosis." And it makes a compelling case for how smallpox could be modified, with the help of a $5000, second-hand machine.

So how does the public defend itself, when this kind of knowledge and sophistication is spreading? None of the scientists interviewed had any blockbuster solutions. But they all agreed: the Bush administration's approach -- spinning up dozens of new hot-zone labs, all handling deadly agents -- has been shortsighted, even dangerous.

"There are now more than 300 U.S. institutions with access to live bioweapons agents and 16,500 individuals approved to handle them," [Rutgers University’s Richard] Ebright told me. While all of those people have undergone some form of background check -- to verify, for instance, that they aren't named on a terrorist watch list and aren't illegal aliens -- it's also true, Ebright noted, that "Mohammed Atta would have passed those tests without difficulty."

Furthermore, Ebright told me, at the time of our interview, 97 percent of the researchers receiving funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study bioweapon agents had never been funded for such work before. Few of them, therefore, had any prior experience handling these pathogens; multiple incidents of accidental release had occurred during the previous two years.

Slipshod handling of bioweapons-level pathogens is scary enough, I conceded. But isn't the proliferation of bioweaponeering expertise, I asked, more worrisome? After all, what reliable means do we have of determining whether somebody set out to be a molecular biologist with the aim of developing bioweapons?

"That's the most significant concern," Ebright agreed. "If al-Qaeda wished to carry out a bioweapons attack in the U.S., their simplest means of acquiring access to the materials and the knowledge would be to send individuals to train within programs involved in biodefense research."

(Big ups: Glenn)

UPDATE 03/15/06 9:13 AM: Chem-bio specialist (and former intermittent Defense Tech guest-blogger) Jason Sigger calls BS on TR, saying, "This is the prime example of why you shouldn't let scientists evaluate issues of terrorism or military combat just because the weapon's lethality derives from the hard sciences."

DTRA's New Digs

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency formally opened its new facility on Fort Belvoir: the Defense Threat Reduction Center (DTRC). VIPs in attendance for the ribbon-cutting included Dr. Dale Klein, the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical and Biological Defense (DTRA’s boss); General James Cartwright, U.S. Strategic Command’s (STRATCOM) commander (overseeing the DoD combating WMD efforts); Mr. Ken Krieg, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; and Senator Richard Lugar. Since Lugar practically funds half of DTRA through the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) effort, it was a nice touch to see the godfather of arms control there.

Most of the speeches were your typical political, generic statements: “WMD reduction is important, DTRA is a vital source of resources and people, it’s a big challenge but you’re well-positioned to meet the threat, blah blah blah.” Lugar of course was much smoother and had more time as the keynote speaker. He noted the strong success of the CTR in reducing the former Soviet Union’s ballistic missiles, silos, launchers, and bombers, and a little work in the chem-bio weapons side, too. “It’s critical to ensure the world’s most dangerous weapons are kept out of the hands of the world’s most dangerous people.” I think he meant the radical Christian evangelists, but I’m not sure. He made a strong pitch to increase the scope of Nunn-Lugar to nations outside the former Soviet Union, pointing out the success of U.S. efforts to assist Albania in disposing of sixteen tons of mustard agent it had picked up from the Chinese in the 1970s. He had an amendment to this year’s defense appropriations bill, but it was unfortunately killed in conference. He noted wryly that this expansion was necessary – who knows whether North Korea and Iran might someday ask for U.S. assistance in getting rid of their WMD arsenal.

The $78 million dollar DTRC facility is a real piece of work – construction started four years ago with the aim of bringing most of the disparate parts of DTRA to one office location. A primary factor was the desire to increase its force protection standards and to get off of Telegraph Road, where the building was maybe 30 yards from the road. DTRA reorganized within the last year to realign its research and development offices into one main directorate and all of its combating WMD operations support into another directorate. It has a collaboration center that “provides a core infrastructure and management architecture that translates operational requirements into decision support, situational awareness, and a unique support capability” for interagency work in combating WMD efforts.

The new third directorate is the STRATCOM Center for Combating WMD (SCC-WMD). Under STRATCOM’s responsibility to integrate and synchronize all DoD combating WMD requirements, this SCC-WMD represents the agency that will execute the day-to-day responsibilities such as advocating and advising the combatant commands on all WMD-related matters, providing recommendations on combating WMD operations and acquisition efforts, and maintaining 24/7 situational awareness of worldwide WMD and related activities through DTRA’s operations center. It won’t be until October that the SCC-WMD is fully staffed and operational, but expect its players to be actively involved in the interpretation of the Quadrennial Defense Review and the building of the FY08-13 Program Objective Memorandum this spring.

UPDATE: DefenseLink article on the ribbon-cutting ceremony is online here.

-- Jason Sigger, Armchair Generalist

Biodefense: Big Bucks, Small Results

The must-read article of the day comes from Time magazine, which has a long expose on the clusterfuck that is Project Bioshield, the government's $5.6 billion plan to shore up the country's defenses against germ attacks.

Despite all the cash, "BioShield hasn't transformed much of anything besides expanding the federal bureaucracy," says Time. "Most of the big pharmaceutical and biotech firms want nothing to do with developing biodefense drugs. The little companies that are vying for deals say they are being stymied by an opaque and glacially slow contracting process. The one big contract that has been awarded -- for 75 million doses of a next-generation anthrax vaccine -- is tangled in controversy."

With the industry's profits under pressure, none of the big firms are keen on diverting research from potential blockbusters to drugs for exotic germs like Ebola and plague, which may be stockpiled and used only in an emergency. Biodefense is "not attractive to Big Pharma, which is making money off things we use a few times a day," says Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. Companies are also leery of huge liability risks if biodefense vaccines and treatments are administered to wide swaths of the population. As for that $5.6 billion that is supposed to be allocated over 10 years? It's a pittance, given that the average cost of bringing a new drug to market is estimated to be $800 million, according to a 2001 study by the Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development. "There has to be a big bucket of gold at the end of the rainbow to get the big companies," Greenberger says...

[S]ome scientists [also] question the government's "one bug, one drug" scientific approach to biodefense. Developing a new smallpox vaccine for a strain found in nature may sound reasonable, but what about bioengineered strains produced at old Soviet labs, say, which may be floating around on the black market? There's no guarantee that those germs will respond to drugs tailored to other strains. Dr. Steven Projan, vice president of biological technologies for the pharmaceutical firm Wyeth, argues that it would make more sense for the government to stockpile and invest in broad-spectrum antibiotics, antivirals and new vaccine technologies that could be applied to biodefense. He and other scientists are also concerned that the FDA's approval standard for biodefense drugs, which is lower than that for commercial medicines, could lead to unforeseen, perhaps dangerous side effects in humans. Companies aren't required to conduct human clinical trials to show that a biodefense drug is effective; they only have to demonstrate that the drug works in animals and is safe in humans (since infecting people with a disease like anthrax to test a medicine is obviously unethical).

Public-health experts are also worried that money is flowing into terrorism-related medicine at the expense of more basic needs like hospital beds and respirators, which may be just as critical to saving lives in a crisis. And they are concerned that the government's obsession with biodefense is distracting from research into infectious diseases. Last March, 758 microbiologists signed a petition to the NIAID, complaining about the "massive influx of funding" for bioterrorism agents like anthrax, tularemia and plague. The institute now spends nearly $1.7 billion on biodefense -- up from just $42 million in 2001 -- out of a $4.3 billion budget (although the biodefense funding hasn't detracted from other research, according to the agency). Meanwhile, hardly any new antibiotics have been approved by the FDA in recent years, despite the fact that scientists have grown more concerned about antibiotic-resistant bacteria. "The big challenge is how we deal with epidemic infectious diseases, not anthrax," says Dr. David Ozonoff, a professor at Boston University's School of Public Health.