TO COUNTER WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, U.S. REACHING OUT TO INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS
By Grace V. Jean
National Defense Magazine
chive/2010/June/Pages/ToCounterWeaponsofMassDestru ction,USReachingOutToInternationalPartners.aspx
Ju ne 2010
FORT BELVOIR, Va. — The H1N1 virus. The gassing of schools in
Southwestern and Central Asia. These recent events are reminders of
how deadly chemical and biological threats can be, whether they are
natural or man-made.
U.S. officials believe that terrorists aspire to build bio-weapons.
The White House in recent months has sought to beef up science and
technology for global bio-surveillance to counter the threat. It is
also expanding collaborative efforts with international partners.
"When we think of countering weapons of mass destruction, we have to
think layered defenses. We can’t just think about our borders," said
John Harvey, principal deputy for the assistant to the secretary of
defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs. "We
have to reach out beyond our borders to try to deal with this, to
build the capacity, to try to build the partners that we need."
One of the newer initiatives is the national strategy for countering
biological threats, said Bill Huff, chief of the chemical and
biological operations division at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
The White House last November issued the strategy, which was spawned
in part by a 2008 weapons of mass destruction commission report that
predicted a biological weapon attack could happen within the next
five years.
"Part of that strategy is to strengthen the abilities of our foreign
partners to exploit life sciences," he said.
The Defense Department is working to implement the plan, said Harvey.
The United States so far has succeeded in preventing a nuclear
attack because the processes to build a weapon — enriching uranium
or separating plutonium from a reactor — are difficult for terrorists.
But attaining chemical agents and biological pathogens are
comparatively easy because the technologies are much more ubiquitous.
The Defense Department wants to prevent terrorists from acquiring
those tools, said Harvey.
"Our security, particularly in the chem-bio and nuclear areas, depends
upon our ability to engage international partners," he said. "Get them
thinking about the problem and working to help us to help identify,
detect, diagnose and attribute the origin of potential weapons of
mass destruction."
To date, the focus has been in Russia, where the bulk of bio-threats
has historically existed. But the department is broadening its scope.
Regional combatant commanders are being asked to help engage
international partners, said Harvey.
"Gen. David Petraeus is fighting two wars right now. His top priority
is not countering weapons of mass destruction; it’s dealing with the
day-to-day activities," said Harvey. "But he understands this and
others do as well, that these do present a long-term threat."
DTRA is seeking to boost capabilities to detect, diagnose and attribute
the origin of biological or chemical threats.
"If we can develop the forensic means to identify where this stuff is
coming from and what lab it came from, for example, we have a better
opportunity to get those who might be doing this stuff to think twice
about it, because we can pin it on them," said Harvey.
DTRA officials and scientists have been working with a number
of countries, including Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and
Uzbekistan, said Ronnie Faircloth, director of the cooperative threat
reduction directorate. A program in Armenia will get under way once
its government ratifies the agreement.
"It is in the U.S. best interest … to partner with as many people
as we can to expand our early warning system and to enhance their
ability to meet the international health regulation standards that
almost every country has committed to. They have to meet that by 2012
— detection, diagnostics and reporting," said Faircloth.
Teamed with the Danish and Canadian governments, the United States
is building a bio-reference laboratory in Kazakhstan. The country’s
ministry of health will manage the facility, which will house a
bio-safety laboratory where scientists can conduct experiments. The
project also includes representatives from the ministries of
agriculture, education and science.
In the coming years, the United States will pursue similar initiatives
in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. "We are going
global," said Faircloth. But "we’re limited by the number of people,
time and dollars to implement some of these programs."
The Defense Department in fiscal year 2011 requested $130 million
more than the program’s baseline funding of $420 million.
"We’re looking into countries where these threats might emerge from
— Pakistan and elsewhere, and working with them to try to set up
cooperative relationships in bio-surveillance and detection, and more
broadly, bio-defense," said Harvey. "We’re not just talking about
man-made threats. We’re talking about naturally occurring threats as
well. These things tend to merge together. Bad guys could plant H1N1,
which is naturally occurring, and cause us a lot of problems."
Along with bio-surveillance, there is also an emphasis on "consequence
management," which generally is defined as the government’s response
to an attack.
"We realize that we need to do a better job in supporting state and
local authorities in domestic events," said Harvey. "The thing that
we need to do is extend this to foreign consequence management. Like
in Haiti, we’re going to get called in and we’re going to have to deal
with that," he added. "How do we build these capabilities overseas?"
Scientists want to understand the genetic and molecular makeup of
diseases and how they impact people, officials said. The objective
is to be able to pinpoint their origin and ultimately save lives.
Another area that needs work is in the sharing of information across
medical, laboratory, bio-surveillance and environmental organizations.
Scientists want to consolidate the data and create predictive models
that can help nations understand what is going on in the environment
and anticipate problems.
One program, the interagency biological restoration demonstration,
explores how a city would cope with a biological attack. The
program is co-funded by Defense and Homeland Security. Last fall,
officials conducted a test in Seattle involving citywide exposure to
simulated anthrax. Local first responders worked with state and federal
government officials in that exercise, said Jerry Pate, deputy chief
of the chem-bio directorate’s physical science and technology division.
In April, a follow-on experiment took place at the Marshall Center
in Germany involving about 200 allied country representatives. The
scenario featured a simulated anthrax release in Bulgaria. The intent
was to see how European countries would respond and what support they
would require from NATO and U.S. forces stationed on bases there. Pate
said the division would be working with the State Department in a
future exercise there.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
