American Experience

Experts Q and A

Ed Regis in his book The Biology of Doom writes: “The great mystery of biological warfare, in the end, was why they were never used.” His answer was “It was because there is no immediate visual display of overwhelming power.” Why do you think biological weapons have had only limited use?

Raymond Zilinskas answers:
A lot depends on which biological weapons program one is considering. The pre-1969 U.S. biological weapons program was never popular with the military, to the point where no appropriate force structure or protocol existed; i.e., even though we had biological weapons, no one in the military knew when they would be used or how. Probably the U.S. would have considered their use only if someone had used biological weapons against the U.S.

From interviews with Soviet scientists and military people I learned that they believed these weapons would never be used; again, there was no force structure or protocol in the Soviet military. Their program was like an uncontrolled juggernaut that just kept going until the money ran out.

For terrorists generally, it is extremely difficult to develop, manufacture and use a biological weapon that would kill a lot of people; killing depends on the effective aerosol dispersal of a deadly pathogen or pathogenic spore. It is relatively easy to do what the Rajneeshees did, which was to make a lot of people sick with a food-borne agent. But to kill a lot of people with an aerosol is very difficult. The anthrax letters demonstrated that it could be done, but they probably were prepared by someone who had access to Bacillus anthracis and was well trained in clinical microbiology.

Martin Furmanski answers:
First of all, it is not true that biological weapons have NEVER been used. Biological weapons directed against military livestock were used on several continents by state-sponsored and state-supported German saboteurs in World War I. The Japanese biological weapons program used biological weapons directed against enemy military personnel in the Nomonhan Border clash with the Soviet Army in 1939 and against Chinese civilians in several attacks from 1940-1942, including a major province-wide campaign in Zhejiang Province in the summer of 1942 which caused thousands of civilian casualties.

An important factor to consider is that these initial uses were not dramatically successful: the German World War I anti-animal campaign had no effect on the supply of military animals to the Allies, and the Nomonhan biological weapons use by the Japanese did not avert a crushing victory by the Soviets, and, moreover, backfired on the Japanese, causing many “blowback” Japanese casualties. The 1940-41 attacks on Chinese cities caused a few cases of plague, but did not depopulate the cities or cause massive epidemics. The 1942 Zhejiang campaign caused much suffering and mortality, but the biological weapons aspect of that campaign was not overwhelming from the military viewpoint, and “blowback” cases were reported in Japanese troops as well. In short, the initial employments of biological weapons were NOT the dramatic successes seen in the initial employments of other weapons of mass destruction: the first employment of chemical weapons on the western front in World War I temporarily broke the Allied line, and the effect of the Hiroshima bomb needs no elaboration.

The historical record indicates that the important advocates of biological weapons (like Ishii in Japan, Fildes in the U.K., Merck in the U.S., Banting in Canada, Trillat in France, Fishman in U.S.S.R.) were scientists who sought to “sell” their idea for biological weapons to the military establishment. The idea did not come from the military, and the mainline military always remained suspicious and doubtful about biological weapons, particularly since there was no dramatic demonstration of the effectiveness of biological weapons on the battlefield.

The reluctance of the professional military to embrace biological weapons comes from several conflicts between the “culture” necessary to use biological weapons and the traditional “culture” of the professional military. To some extent, particularly for officers trained in the pre-World War II era, this was evident from a purely “moral” viewpoint: military “honor” traditionally forbid using poisoned weapons or polluting wells, etc., or in causing indiscriminant harm to non-combatants, and this was a powerful sentiment among many of the senior military leaders during World War II and the early cold war. Chemical warfare had been forbidden before World War I, and the German initiation of chemical weapons in World War I was viewed as a dishonorable violation of the rules of warfare by such major U.S. military leaders as General John Pershing. Biological warfare was considered akin to chemical warfare.

Another aspect was the “technical” or “social” aspect of actually employing biological weapons, as opposed to employing conventional military weapons. One advocate of chemical weapons in the 1920s lamented that chemical weapons would never be accepted by career military officers because “there is no sport analogous to using chemical weapons.” This was not a flippant statement: traditional military operations embodied the “manly” activities of marching, riding, camping, shooting, swordplay, and later flying aircraft and operating motor vehicles. Using chemical weapons required detailed scientific understanding and calculation, wearing cumbersome protective masks and garments, and using chemical detecting kits. In present day social terms, military officers have always been “jocks” and chemical weapons and biological weapons advocates have been “nerds.” Unless the “nerds” could offer a “war winning weapon” the “jocks” would just as soon skip the masks and inoculations if they could help it. The experience of chemical weapons in World War I was that although it at first offered a temporary advantage, it did not tip the scales of the war (indeed Germany always held a considerable superiority in both quality and quantity of offensive chemical weapons) and the use of chemical weapons made military life in the trenches even more ghastly. So from the “social” point of view, the “jocks” decided there was no point in making their campaigning more unpleasant by adding chemical weapons to it. And in the treaties outlawing first use of chemical weapons and biological weapons, the “jocks” had a way of doing it: just don’t start the thing yourself and nobody has to put up with the bother. Interestingly, in both Germany and the U.K. in World War II, consideration was given to initiating chemical weapons, but in both cases it was the military brass that declined such a move. Indeed, Winston Churchill was in favor, and in disgust stated: “I cannot fight both the parsons and the warriors.”

A third aspect is that, given a healthy skepticism by the mainline military, the advocates within the military (who were the career officers in the Chemical Corps) could not easily produce a weapon that was attractive to the combat officers who would have to use it. They could make something that could kill or incapacitate that was biological, but from a military point of view, was it a weapon? This “tunnel vision” backfired on the biological weapons program in multiple ways. For instance, by making unrealistically optimistic promises, the biological weapons program convinced the Air Force to fund a massive effort to make a strategic biological weapons bombing capability in 1952-53. But this crash program failed: the Strategic Air Command wanted a “killer agent” but the biological weapons program had none to offer: two bomb designs the biological weapons program developed failed in their field tests and, moreover, could only be carried by obsolete propeller-driven bombers vulnerable to Soviet MiG jet fighters. And the weapon system they proposed proved to be impossible to deploy from a logistical point of view: because the agent was perishable, it needed to be shipped by air, and in event of a “hot” war there would be insufficient air transport capability to sustain a biological weapons bombing campaign. Politically it was also impossible to deploy, because it required storage of “hot” biological weapons munitions in the U.K., but under exclusive control by the U.S. The U.K., an adherent to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning first use of biological weapons or chemical weapons, (and vulnerable to Soviet retaliation in kind after a U.S. first-use of biological weapons) refused to allow biological weapons munitions on its soil.

Inescapable limitations of biological weapons made them problematical because the military needed to plan integrated campaigns with multiple forces and weapons systems. Successful employment of biological weapons requires particular weather conditions: dispersion of biological weapons agents in unsuitable conditions results in no effect. But determining weather conditions in advance over a distant target in enemy territory is difficult, and was particularly so in the Cold War era and earlier: the Air Force had trouble enough just predicting if there would be weather clear enough for the usual targeting of bombs and rockets, and the requirements for a successful biological weapons attack were much more stringent than simple good visibility. And military planners do not readily accept that they must factor in the necessity to delay an entire campaign while waiting for acceptable weather for a biological weapons attack, particularly since conventional bombs and nuclear weapons go off where and when they are targeted. Operational requirements can also be challenging: for instance spraying biological weapons from aircraft requires very low altitude flight often in conditions of poor visibility, exposing aircraft the hazards of ground-based obstacles and ground based anti-aircraft fire.

Even in the field tests advertised as demonstrating the effectiveness of biological weapons, there are “devils in the details” that were apparent to those looking at the results critically. For instance, Q fever and tularemia tests indicated aerosol infection was possible, but tularemia and Q fever were picked because only a few organisms can cause disease if inhaled, making dissemination by a single plane possible. But neither agent is a “weapon of mass destruction” comparable to nuclear weapons. Q fever is only very rarely fatal even if untreated, and tularemia is easily and effectively treated by a variety of readily available antibiotics. Candidate lethal biological weapons agents are not so potent: for instance anthrax requires about 1,000 times more organisms to be inhaled than does tularemia or Q fever: so for a similar coverage to the tularemia/Q fever tests you need 1,000 planes, not a single one.

In summary, despite recurrent claims by biological weapons advocates that BW was a “mighty weapon,” it was never really accepted as such by the line military command because it did not offer a significant military advantage.

Are biological weapons perishable? What is required to keep them “fresh”?

Raymond Zilinskas answers:
Remember, and this is important, a biological weapon is a system of which the payload of pathogens or toxin is just one of four parts. With this in mind, pathogens are by nature not designed to exist in a closed environment as represented by a warhead or storage tank, so they die off at a rate that depends on the agent in question (usually measured in terms of “half-life”; i.e., the time it takes for half of a stored number of organisms to die). Weapons scientists attempt to lengthen the half-life of weapons agents by “formulating” them; i.e., by protecting agents while in storage with chemical additives. It takes weapons scientists a long time and much effort to conduct experiments in which agents are combined with different combinations of chemicals and then the half-lives of the various combinations are measured. So, formulations are products of art rather than science and both U.S. and Soviet formulations are top secret to this day. Terrorists would have neither the expertise, nor patience to develop formulations.

Martin Furmanski answers:
There are several categories of biological weapons, and they differ in their perishability, depending on their origin and their preparation. All agents are initially produced “wet” and may be stored that way: some can be further processed and dried given more sophisticated facilities. Common examples are milk or baker’s yeast: they are made “wet”, and can be stored “wet” for a few days, but given a proper factory they can be dried and stored for months.

Some biological weapons agents are naturally very hardy: the only significant example is anthrax. Depending on the moisture, it may last only a few months in the soil if wet, or years if dry. If prepared in a “wet” preparation, it may keep a few months. If prepared “dry” it can keep years under the proper condition.

Most biological weapons agents are much more fragile: most need to be stored “wet” and refrigerated. They only last 30-60 days at most. Refrigerated storage is a hallmark of biological weapons warheads: in inspections the presence of refrigerated munitions bunkers is taken to indicate the presence of biological weapons, and during the Cold War the U.S. identified biological weapons warheads on Soviet missiles because infrared images indicated the warheads were refrigerated!

Only a few of the fragile agents can be dried: most are killed in the drying process. Of those that can be successfully dried, often only a small fraction of the original organisms survive, reducing the potency of the biological weapons preparation. But dried it can be kept for months or years.

Drying is a double-edged sword: it makes the agent less perishable in storage but introduces a variety of problems in addition to the loss of agent in the drying process. The drying process is difficult and hazardous. And the drying process complicates getting the biological weapons agent back into the air: most dried powders “clump” and the agent falls harmlessly to the ground. It takes a lot of research and development to dry the agent in the first place, and then a lot more research and development to develop ways of releasing it. Such an effort would typically require a national military biological weapons effort.

Raymond Zilinskas answers:
Depends on his training. If he was an environmental or clinical microbiologist, and assuming he had access to a virulent strain, and assuming he had access to the appropriate culture media, it would be fairly easy to grow and propagate Bacillus anthracis. This is not a fastidious organism; it grows pretty well on standard media and in an environment kept at about 37 degrees Centigrade (body temperature).

Martin Furmanski answers:
Well, it was not too hard to TRY and make biological weapons agents in the basement, but harder to actually make effective bioweapons. Dilger tried to grow the bacteria that causes glanders, an important disease of horses in the early 20th century. It could be grown easily enough on common materials available to a physician. (Dilger was American-born of German parents, but educated since childhood in Germany as a doctor, and was a German secret agent operating in the U.S. before the U.S. entered World War I.) But the bacteria that Dilger grew never made any horses sick: either the stock cultures he brought from Germany died on the way over, or the conditions under which he grew them made them less virulent, or the methods of spreading the germs were ineffective. At any rate, glanders was an important disease and was tested for routinely, and no unexplained outbreaks occurred in horses purchased in the U.S. by Britain.

Dilger was not caught. He was under suspicion as being a German agent, and when the U.S. entered World War I, he was interviewed by the Bureau of Investigation (later called the FBI): after this interview he fled to Mexico, and later to Spain, where he died of the Spanish Influenza in 1918.

The Dilger biological weapons sabotage ring was uncovered in the 1920s and 1930s when various U.S. companies attempted to obtain compensation for acts of sabotage by German agents during the period of U.S. neutrality (the most important being the sabotage causing the explosion of the Black Tom munitions factory in New Jersey). During this investigation a wide variety of sabotage activities such as planting explosives or incendiary devices were uncovered, and the Dilger anti-equid biological weapons as well. Dilger had employed U.S. dockworkers to spread the biological weapons agent to horses awaiting shipment to Britain, and these dockworkers were given immunity from prosecution to turn “states evidence” against the German government. They and some of Dilger’s loyal American relatives gave the information we have.