The Pentagon’s chemical-biological defense program is well
equipped to handle threats to military units in the battlefield,
but is not prepared to tackle emerging homeland security missions,
experts said.
A case in point is the protection of local communities that surround
military bases in the United States, said Albert J. Mauroni, a defense
policy analyst and a former U.S. Army Chemical Corps officer.
When developing contingency plans for terrorist threats, military
installations should take into account what would happen to the
civilians around the base in the case of a biological attack, Mauroni
said. There already is a chemical stockpile emergency preparedness
program in place, but there is no equivalent effort for biological
defense. "There are policy and funding constraints to taking
immediate action," said Mauroni. "There’s a lot
of sticky policy issues that have not been decided yet and until
that happens we will continue to have vulnerability."
The upshot, he said, is that the Defense Department must figure
out how to deal with emerging threats at home. "The [Defense
Deparment’s] chemical and biological program has addressed
the war- time requirement and we don’t have any direction
on what to do with homeland defense," he said. "We thought
that the bases in the U.S. were always going to be safe."
The force protection policy already in place states that installation
commanders have to set up contingency plans for chemical and biological
threats. However, it is up to the installation commanders to assess
the situation, evaluate the threat and implement a force protection
plan. "Not everyone is convinced that a chem-bio threat is
their number-one priority," said Mauroni. "Explosives
may show up more on their radar screens." Many commanders,
for example, would like to use some of their base-operation money
to bolster protection against conventional truck bombs, versus biological
attacks.
Mauroni suggested that military base-protection plans should be
tied in with the public health system and work together with other
U.S. agencies that traditionally deal with biological threats. However,
he said, there are unsolved issues that stem from having to balance
the need to protect military forces against the need to safeguard
the general public. "We can’t lose sight of making sure
that forces can do the job on the field," he said. "Protection
of the homeland is the number one issue that we still have to fight."
Even though the biological defenses developed for military use
are not necessarily appropriate for homeland defense, Mauroni said,
technologies could cross over to the civilian sector. Among the
most important civilian systems needed, he said, are medical surveillance
devices.
In recent years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
has been exploring the use of biological cells and tissues as detector
components for sensor devices that will report on chemical and biological
toxins.
David Siegrist, director of studies for countering biological terrorism
at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said that more needs
to be done to develop electronic signatures for mass-spectrometers
that can detect certain proteins. This technology, he explained,
could help first responders automate the detection process.
An underwriters’ laboratory is needed, he said, to test commercial
technologies that are vying for government attention. That way,
"people would know which products are reliable and have been
tested in realistic environments and would perform well," Siegrist
said.
Many of the existing technologies, he said, should be deployed
at joint military-civilian locations. "It is important for
mission accomplishment that even the local civilians who help the
service receive protection," he said. "As some of these
detection systems become more reliable and timely, it is a step
that should be taken."
Chemical detection technology is quite advanced today, according
to experts. That is not the case with biological capabilities, which
are much more challenging. "Biological detection is hard, because
the biological signatures are not as distinctive as the chemical
ones," said Siegrist.
In the presence of potential biological threats, one must determine
whether the microbe is a virulent species and whether it is actually
alive and reproductive, he explained. In order to be effective,
biological agents have to be approximately one to five microns in
size. "That is small enough to reach deep into the lungs without
being exhaled," Siegrist said.
In his opinion, biological detection is a difficult and time-consuming
task. "The military has tried to detect plumes of biological
agents in the atmosphere, but they found out there were so many
other elements in the atmosphere that they couldn’t develop
reliable detection," said Siegrist.
Experimental technology employed long-range, infrared lasers that
would look for clouds of biological origin. "We haven’t
gone forward with anything better," Mauroni said.
Both Mauroni and Siegrist agreed that the Joint Portal Shield Network
system is the most reliable bio-detection system currently deployed.
In fact, the Pentagon has just received one of those systems.
According to the Pentagon’s 2001 Chemical and Biological
Defense Program Annual Report, Portal Shield is an interim capability
for bio detection, used at several locations overseas. Portal Shield
currently is in production. It was successfully deployed in support
of Operation Desert Thunder against Iraq in 1998 and was also used
during NATO’s 50th anniversary summit, in Washington, D.C.
An additional 19 sites are expected to receive the system by 2002.
The system uses a network of sensors to increase probability of
detecting biological agents, while decreasing false alarms and consumables
(extraneous elements in the atmosphere), said the report. Portal
Shield consists of a variable number of biological sensors mounted
around the perimeter of a fixed site, forming a network under the
command and control of a centralized post computer.
The computer communicates with the sensors and also monitors them.
Sensors are modular in design and can detect and presumably identify
up to eight biological weapon agents simultaneously in less than
25 minutes, according to the report. The system also has chemical
sensor interfaces that facilitate an integrated chemical and biological
sensor network.
Although Portal Shield is the most advanced system available today,
Mauroni said that it could take up to 30 minutes to detect the biological
agents. "It is a commercial system, it needs a specialist to
run and is expensive to maintain and keep it running in the field,"
he said. "It is better than having nothing at all."
Portal Shield also is difficult to maintain, because it is highly
customized technology, so spare parts are not easy to obtain.
In the future, the Defense Department plans to introduce a new
system to replace existing biological detectors. It is called the
Joint Biological Point Detection System (JBPDS). According to Mauroni,
the system would detect biological agents in about 15 minutes. It
was designed to be used by all the military services, with spare
parts readily available in the Defense Department depot system.
"It will use the same technology [as Portal Shield], but it
will decrease the detection time," said Mauroni. "It is
a military designed and tested equipment, cheaper and easier to
maintain." Each JBPDS system costs about $500,000. The price
may come down as larger quantities are produced, said Mauroni.
The Defense Department so far has ordered 25 JBPDS units, which
will be tested extensively, before any more systems are purchased.
"There were some issues on test and evaluation they are still
working on the system," Mauroni said. "If everything goes
right, they will go into full production at the end of 2003."
The Joint Program Office awarded an Engineering and Manufacturing
Development contract in fiscal 1997 for the development of JBPDS
prototypes for all services.
According to the chemical-biological annual report, the JBPDS common
biological detection suite will consist of four functions: trigger—which
detects in real time a significant change in the ambient aerosol;
collection—which gathers samples of the suspect aerosol to
be analyzed by the JBPDS and to confirm analyses; detection—which
is able to broadly categorize the contents of the aerosol and lend
confidence to the detection process; and identification—which
provides presumptive identification of the suspect biological weapon
agent and increases the confidence in the detection process.
These four functions will be integrated, in order to automate biological
detection and warning capabilities. According to the report, the
JBPDS program will undergo block upgrades over time, so the system
can be fielded as soon as possible, while taking advantage of advances
in the biological detection/identification, information processing
and engineering sciences.
In the inventory today is the seven-year-old M31 Biological Integrated
Detection System, or BIDS. It was constructed in modular fashion
to allow for easier component replacement. Anna Johnson-Winegar,
deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical and biological
defense, said that JBPDS could be integrated into BIDS, "to
provide fully automated, broad-spectrum biological detection/identification
capability."
BIDS is mounted on a shelter-equipped Humvee truck. One BIDS variant
is capable of detecting and identifying four biological agents simultaneously
in less than 45 minutes. Thirty-eight BIDS of this type were fielded
to the 310th Chemical Company (U.S. Reserve) in 1996. BIDS is a
corps level asset.
An upgraded version of BIDS, called the Pre-Planned Product Improvement
variant, is capable of detecting and presumably identifying eight
biological agents simultaneously in 30 minutes. "The suite
is semi-automated and contains next-generation technologies, such
as the Ultraviolet Particle Sizer, Chemical Biological Mass Spectrometer
and the Biological Detector [antibody based device]," said
the Defense Department’s annual report. Thirty-eight systems
were fielded to the 7th Chemical Company in 1999.
All these technologies offer point detection, which is also known
as "detect-to-treat capability." They essentially alert
troops in the field of a biological attack in the area. Stand-off
detection is more technically challenging, said Mauroni. But that
is what is needed to protect units in combat, he said. "What
everybody ideally wants is a system that lets you put on a mask
before you are exposed."
Mauroni noted that the technology favored within the defense community
is a combination of an ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) laser.
The IR laser could detect a cloud 15 to 20 kilometers away while
the UV laser could tell whether it is a biological cloud. "The
UV laser can only go out to 5 kilometers and could give you a few
minutes’ warning to give you some caution," said Mauroni.
According to the Pentagon’s annual report, the government
is developing a joint biological stand-off detection system, or
JBSDS. The system will be capable of providing near real time, on-the-move
detection of biological attacks or incidents and stand-off, early
detection/warning of biological agents at fixed sites or mounted
on reconnaissance platforms. JBSDS will enable stand-off detection
of aerosol clouds at ranges of up to 25 kilometers, with an objective
of 40 kilometers, officials said.
This system will provide early-warning through the Joint Warning
and Reporting System, which at this point is an advanced concept
technology demonstration (ACTD). "It may have short-range biological
standoff detection systems and dense arrays of small, rugged point
detectors, integrated into a distributed network of sensors,"
said the report.
The JBSDS will augment and integrate with existing biological detection
systems to offer a biological detection network capable of near
real time detection and warning theater-wide. "JBSDS will have
the flexibility to warn automatically or to allow for human intervention
in the detection-to-alarm process," said the report. JBSDS
will be used at fixed sites, air/sea ports of debarkation, amphibious
landing sites and various platforms.