The latest report Mapping the Global Future on US national security by the National Intelligence Council suggests that a major threat to the country right through to 2020 will be a terrorist biological weapons attack.1 Given the recent intelligence failures concerning biological weapons in Iraq, it might be considered that there are reasonable grounds for suspicion about that conclusion. This paper attempts to answer the question of what the real threat of bioterror is by reference to the open scientific literature. Section 2 of the paper discusses the nature of the agents of concern and in section 3 various potential attack scenarios are reviewed. The overall conclusion is that there are real threats from terrorists with the capability to carry out a range of attacks with biological agents today, but that these threats do not include the one most commentators probably have in mind when they discuss the issue ¿ a weapons of mass destruction scale of attack on people. In the final section of this paper the implications of the analysis for the risk questions we have been posed are addressed.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The defense response against chemical and biological (Chem/bio) weapons has gained a renewed focus in light of the 11 Sept 2001 terrorist attack. A successful response to a Chem/bio attack would involve measuring and predicting the dispersion of a toxic cloud in the atmosphere. TheNPS Aeronautics and Astronautics Department is working together with the Meteorology Department on a technique to make toxic cloud measurements using an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV). In support of this mission, the UAV will require precise and accurate air data (airspeed, angle of attack ["alpha"], and sideslip angle ["beta"]) so that wind data extraction can be carried out from air and inertial data for use in plume dispersion modeling. The efforts in this thesis concentrate on the air data system to produce precise and accurate air data for the support of the Chem/bio response UAV flights. The primary concerns are the choice and design of the air data system; the calibration of the system using the flow fields from computer simulation; and the processing of air data. The air data extracted will be used for wind determination so that the movement of the Chem/bio dispersed agent in the atmosphere can be predicted. / Captain, Republic of Singapore Air Force

Thesis (M.S.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Thesis advisor(s): Richard Doyle, Raymond E. Franck, Jr. Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-50). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Richard M. Howard, Vladimir N. Dobrokhodov. Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-100). Also available online.

Current revolutions in biotechnology and neuroscience are changing military technologies, necessitating dramatic re-evaluations in arms regulatory regimes. This study assesses how these new technologies can be used in weapons systems - by governments and terrorists alike - and whether this frightening development can be brought under effective international control. Malcolm Dando begins by surveying the existing (and arguably inadequate) control mechanisms for chemical and biological weapons. He then discusses how earlier generations of toxin and bioregulatory weapons have been used by such states as Iraq, the Soviet Union and the USA, and explains, in non-technical terms, the implications for new weapons technology. Considering how international law might be applied to constrain undesirable military developments without restricting technological developments for peaceful purposes, Dando concludes with a proposal for an integrated control regime that would link international agreements, national legislation, and trade regulations.

Thesis (M.A.A.S.) -- Air University, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on April 24, 2009). "June 2004." Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-86).

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense))--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2005. / Thesis Advisor(s): Maria Rasmussen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-71). Also available online.

No description available.

Yes / This report addresses the scientific and technological discoveries in the biological sciences that enabled the early interest in biological warfare to move from hurling infected corpses into enemy cities in ancient times, through use of small cultures of animal pathogens to sabotage enemy livestock in World War I, to the origins of organised military biological weapons (BW) programmes directed at humans, animals, and plants in the inter-war period. It builds on Dando¿s 1999 paper: The Impact of the Development of Modern Biology and Medicine on the Evolution of Offensive Biological Warfare Programs in the Twentieth Century.1 For the historical aspects of biological warfare programmes this report primarily draws from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute volume: Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945.2

Yes