Battleeld CBRN Threats Today

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Battlefield CBRN Threats Today

Written by Christopher Prawdzik

MMT 2010 Volume: 14 Issue: 2 (March)

Military Organizations Must Consider a Range of Possible International Threats in Plotting the Best Defense Against Terrorist and Nation-State Threats.

As recently as February 4, 2010, a British newspaper reported that troops had found a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. According to Londons Daily Mail Online, soldiers discovered the seven-meter rocket buried somewhere in Abu Ghraib, a Baghdad suburb. Uncertain if it held a warhead, it was another possible WMD found since Operation Iraqi Freedom began in March 2003. In 2006, Army officials testified before the House Armed Services Committee that about 500 munitions found in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 actually constituted WMDs. At the time, Army Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified that the suspected munitions contained mustard and sarin gasses. While inspectors said large stockpiles representing a robust Iraq WMD program at the outbreak of the war never materialized, such discoveriesand prior knowledge of Iraqs chemical use against its own population and during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980sled to an underlying cautiousness about going into battle in Iraq. But after about seven years in Iraq and nearly 10 years in Afghanistan, the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threat to troops on the ground is less likely than insurgents planting a conventional but strategic improvised explosive device (IED) along the roadside. CBRN threats, however, arent something that troops and officials can dismiss outright. In fact, early attention to possible chemical weapon use could have mad a big difference. Retired Army Brigadier General Dean R. Ertwine, vice president for Army science and technology for Battelle, one of the worlds largest science and technology non-profit research and development organizations, is quick to note the militarys preparedness long before September 11, 2001, and subsequent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. From my perspective, if you think back to Desert Storm 1, back in the early 90s, everybody who was preparing to go over to theater fully expected some type of chemical warfare environment, and it never happened, he said. Arguably, one of the reasons it never happened was because we were prepared, and kind of our national philosophy against the use of chemical weapons was, You dont ever want to use chemical weapons against us because well retaliate not necessarily in kind, but in a worse way. Along with battlefield defenses for troopsphysical defenses and countermeasures, training, medical material and defense equipmentthis illustrated that coalition troops could operate rather effectively, chemical battlefield or not. Regardless of the specific reason, CBRN attacks never happened. The second war in Iraq, I dont think there was any real expectation that there were going to be chemicals, but sure enough, on some of the ammo sites that were discovered there were some of Saddams older chemical munitions, Ertwine added. Ertwin noted hes not an expert on symptoms and reasons for exposure, but said that even though a sophisticated chem-bio delivery didnt materialize in the battlefield [in Iraq], that doesnt mean that troops havent had exposure to dangerous chemicals albeit low exposurewhile in Iraq. Thats a far cry from chemical warfare, he said. Its more almost in a category of what we call toxic industrial chemicals and toxic industrial hazards, and I dont think anybody expects to encounter chemical warfare in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, however, is a bit more unpredictable. Theres no reason to believe theyre going to come out, but, then, on the other hand, [the Taliban does] have a history of being asymmetricaldoing whats not expectedso I dont think anybody rules that possibility out, Ertwine said. ASSESSING THE THREAT Al Mauroni, author of Where Are the WMDs?: The Reality of Chem-Bio Threats on the Home Front and the Battlefront, and a senior defense analyst with SAIC, said that looking at Iraq and Afghanistan, the main challenge has been finding the serious chem-bio threat within the countries: Ambitions perhaps, but not capability, he said. In Afghanistan theres a similar, very poor infrastructure, in that we see no developed weapons that one would usually associate with what we do in the chem-bio warfare area. Coupled with the countermeasures that were developed for the Fulda Gap Scenariothe Cold War scenario that estimated a large-scale Soviet attack might occur in the lowlands between the East German border and Frankfurt, GermanyMauroni said the threat to expect in the current climate would be the improvised use of industrial chemicals by insurgents or single actors. He added that big challenges, instead, are dangers such as indigenous diseasesas opposed to laboratory-bred new onesor where a civilian might pick up a piece of misplaced radioactive material, not understanding the risk. Weve been kind of forced to improvise and adapt to a larger array of hazards, and along with that comes a lot of regulations and other agencies who we dont normally deal with, so we have kind of evolved into almost an all hazards concern, Mauroni said. From this perspective, the all hazards concern actually lends itself to the homeland approach to a CBRN attack. DQE, a U.S.-based company that provides products and support to medical officials and facilities, has worked closely with the Army around the world on such issues. In fact, before September 11, 2001, the Army brought in DQE to equip its medical facilities to handle and treat patients contaminated by possible CBRN attacks in the United States, Europe and Japan. DQE has since worked to produce a strategy to address medical emergencies during an infectious disease outbreak, according to DQE background material. Howard Levitin, DQE president, said the company looks toward assessment and establishing planning models. If you look at the last eight years, the change for hospitals is

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Battleeld CBRN Threats Today

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really the transformation from focusing on the threat that was very specific, he said. Hospitals were planning on looking at a bioterrorism event, or theyre worried about a chemical event or theyre worried about a terrorist bombing. In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s he said there was a transformation to the all hazards approach. Basically, regardless of the eventa chemical attack, Hurricane Katrina, floods or earthquakesthe approach a hospital might take would essentially follow the same framework for each instance. I think its more the realization that it doesnt matter what [is] the underlying cause or ideology of the event, Levitin said. Response and the preparedness the hospital has to take is the same. The real change for DQE is looking at how these events impact hospitalsincident management, good intelligence and analysis. But the homeland can be much different from the battlefield when it comes to addressing such threats. Even though this approach has emerged in many areas, and while it might work well as a model for responders and those treating victims of a CBRN attack, Mauroni cautioned that its an area in which many individuals might be moved out of their traditional roles when considering a troop approach to CBRN threats. Weve seen cases where the CBRN units, particularly in the Army, have been used more as security forces for convoys than for their traditional roles, Mauroni said. The current environments are not necessarily what weve traditionally done. In one sense, it emphasizes the limits of the CBRN threat in todays current battlefield. Mauroni said one reason is that its simply not as easy for an enemy to produce such a large-scale threat as many may think. Having a scientist that can do it on a lab bench is one thing; the challenge is really in creating a large enough quantity and being able to disperse it effectively so that it would cause a considerable number of casualties, he said. You need a little bit more advanced engineering equipment and the capability to test out your devices before you use them ideally. He noted other attacks around the globe illustrate this, where even with years and dollars to create a chemical or biological event, the attacks have often been fatal for some, but have been quite limited in their effectiveness. Such instances, however, also provide a glimpse into the future and the many unknown aspects of future chem-bio threats. NEXT-GENERATION WARFARE Mauroni said in his evolutionary model for chem-bio warfare, states or individual terrorists arent looking for the mass-casualty incident that would be associated with a Cold War scenario. These actorsusing conventional and unconventional weaponsarent going out of their way for the high-tech, high-casualty event. They improvise; they pick up things that they can get off the street, he said. Both chemical and biological warfare agents are kind of out of their reach, so they go for the chlorine tanks, they go for trying to infect food with castor beans and ricinvery low-tech stuff. To explain the evolution of todays threat, Mauroni subscribes to a fourth-generation warfare concept originally outlined in 1989. Writing in Joint Forces Quarterly in the fourth quarter of 2008, Mauroni cites this concept, which breaks down warfare to the pre- 1800 period; 1800 to 1918, where toxic chemicals were considered as warfare agents; 1918 to 1995, where these, along with nuclear weapons were in use; and the fourth-generation, from 1995 to the present, which lends itself less to mass casualty events but more to local attacks, although focused on often inciting widespread panic. Basically, he notes that the Cold War model of a chem-bio threat is falling by the wayside and being replaced by what is happening with IEDs in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The thing is, these are not hard and fast rules from one generation to the next. People will say this toothis model does not preclude nations from saying, Im going to stick with the third-generation model, Mauroni said. I think Iran and North Korea, for instance, they still focus on this idea of mass production of weapons like we used to, while other groups have moved on and focused on developing capabilities for small attacks with chem-bio. In particular, he noted that a big concern is North Korea and its proximity to Seoul in the southwell within range for a large-scale chem-bio attack. Iran, however, is a different story. The country is actually a signatory of the chemical weapons convention and the biological weapons convention, so technically they dont have any program, though Mauroni said the intelligence community suspects the country may do some dabbling in it. Irans capability today is unclear, though, he noted. He also said that the likelihood that such nation-states would provide terrorist organizations with nuclear, biological or chemical munitions and capability is pretty low. I think that nation-states in particular are keenly aware what could happen if they just give stuff to a group that they cant necessarily control, Mauroni said. I think they want to develop that capability, and certainly, while they may have dealings with terrorist organizations, I think thats more in terms of finances or support or conventional weapons; I dont think that theyre that crazy to give terrorists a weaponized agent. Ertwine from Battelle added that the military needs to be prepared for just about anything, but that theres a budget limit for such preparedness. Judging the future, though, is challenging, as the conversation can quickly move into classified circles about future threats. The chemical force structure is limited by a certain number of people, a certain budget, so I think most people involved in that or who observe it do a pretty good job preparing all of our soldiers to operate in a contaminated environment, he said. Theres reason to believe that there are some countries that are still doing research on new agents that would bypass some of our defensive equipment. Thats always an aspect out there. Back to Top

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