Chemical-Biological Warfare

Report Outline
Disclosures About C-B Activity
Gas-Germ Warfare in History
Prospects for New Developments
Special Focus

Disclosures About C-B Activity

Miltary Alarm About Soviet Gas Buildup

The Idea of waging war with deadly gases and other exotic weapons concocted in the laboratory is repulsive to most Americans. Yet such chemical weapons have been an integral part of the U.S. defense program since World War II. However in 1969, following world criticism of this country's use of chemical herbicides and tear gas in Vietnam, the United States said it would henceforth use lethal and incapacitating chemical agents only if the enemy did first, and it renounced all methods of biological—germ—warfare. President Nixon ordered all existing biological warfare agents destroyed and biological research confined to defensive measures such as immunization. After the presidential edict, the military began scaling down its chemical warfare program.

Today the military is voicing concern about an apparent Soviet buildup of chemical weapons and is trying to improve its ability to wage chemical warfare. “The Soviet-Warsaw Pact forces continue to maintain a superior capability to operate in toxic environments,” Gen. George S. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in January. In presenting the Pentagon's annual “military posture” statement, he said: “They are the best equipped and prepared forces in the world to employ chemical weapons and to operate under chemical, biological and radiological warfare conditions…. The Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly support the improvement of our chemical munitions stockpile as an essential element in the necessary overall improvement of our ability to deter and, if necessary, fight in a toxic environment.”

In February, Edward A. Miller, Assistant Secretary of the Army for research and development, and Lt. Gen. Howard H. Cooksey, Deputy Chief of Staff for research and development and acquisition, said in a joint statement to the House Armed Services Committee: “The Soviets are so immersed in chemical weaponry, tactics, doctrine, equipment and personnel, and so much of their training centers around the use of lethal agents, that it would be odd, from a military standpoint, if they did not employ them [in a non-nuclear attack]. Their offensive chemical capability dwarfs ours to the point that they would be throwing away a possibly decisive advantage by not using chemical weapons. Our own offensive chemical weapon arsenal, while not puny, is at this point probably not a sufficient deterrent….” More recently, news dispatches from Brussels, military headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have reported that NATO troops in Europe were receiving gas-survival training.