July 23, 2019

Systems-based Approach to Biodefense Policy Analysis

In this article, co-authored by Dr. Diane DiEuliis, the authors describe a systems-based analysis of the US biosecurity and biodefense policy landscape to analyze functional relationships between policies. They identify two approaches in US policy for countering biological threats: prevention of theft, diversion, or deliberate malicious use of biological technologies, and development of capabilities and knowledge to assess, detect, monitor, respond to, and attribute biological threats.

July 1, 2015

The History of Biological Weapons Use: What We Know and What We Don’t

This article critically reviews the literature on the history of biological warfare, bioterrorism, and biocrimes.

Oct. 1, 2009

President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program

The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was a prominent feature of the Cold War. A lesser known but equally dangerous element of the superpower competition involved biological weapons (BW), living microorganisms that cause fatal or incapacitating diseases in humans, animals, or plants. By the late 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had both acquired advanced BW capabilities. The U.S. biological weapons complex, operated by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, consisted of a research and development laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, an open-air testing site at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and a production facility at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas that manufactured biological warfare agents and loaded them into bomblets, bombs, and spray tanks.

June 1, 2009

Are We Prepared? Four WMD Crises That Could Transform U.S. Security

This report, written by the staff of the National Defense University Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the fall of 2008 and the early winter of 2009, was conceived initially as a transition paper for the new administration following the 2008 American Presidential election.

April 1, 2003

Toward a National Biodefense Strategy

The United States is re-learning an important lesson in the first decade of the 21st century: adversaries may attack the United States, its interests, or those of friends and allies with biological weapons (BW).

Nov. 1, 2002

Anthrax in America: A Chronology and Analysis of the Fall 2001 Anthrax Attacks

This paper describes the 2001 anthrax attacks on the United States and provides a one-year snapshot of the attacks and subsequent response.