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Chemical Weapons

A U.S. Government agency has noted that, “unlike nuclear weapons, which require a large, specialised, and costly scientific-industrial base, CW agents can be made with commercial equipment generally available to any country. Indeed, few military technologies have evolved as little as chemical weapons over the past half-century.”

EFFECTS

Chemical weapons release toxic gases or liquids that attack the body’s nerves, blood, skin or lungs. They may produce surface effects such as tears, blistering, or vomiting, or cause hallucinations or loss of nervous control. Chemical attacks can contaminate an area for between several hours and several days, compromising equipment and forcing troops to wear highly restrictive protective clothing (reducing their efficiency) and / or take chemical antidotes whose side effects remain largely unknown. Chemical attacks cause widespread panic amongst both military and civilian populations, and their terror effects on civilians are potent. The large number of potential casualties places burdens on medical facilities and can overwhelm stretched military resources.

The intimidatory nature of chemical weapons is such that a chemical attack or the threat of a chemical attack can cause wholesale disruption or paralysis of civil and economic activity in the affected area. The psychological effect on a civilian population is likely to cause panic or terror.

Chemical weapons may significantly compromise the operational effectiveness of military forces by requiring widespread protective measures and decontamination which drain human and physical resources.
METHODS OF DELIVERY

Chemical weapons can be delivered by a wide range of weapons systems, including ballistic and cruise missiles, combat aircraft-delivered bombs, artillery shells and land mines. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq delivered mustard gas and tabun with artillery shells, aerial bombs, missiles, rockets, grenades, and bursting smoke munitions. The Soviet-made Scud-B and FROG-7 can deliver warheads bulk-filled with chemical agent and Iraq developed, deployed, but did not use, chemical warheads on its modified Scud missiles during the Gulf War. North Korea is also believed to have developed chemical warheads for its Scud B and Scud C ballistic missiles.

However, CW warheads delivered by ballistic missiles pose some complex engineering problems. Liquid agents moving around within a warhead will cause the missile to veer significantly off course and run the risk of the missile completely missing its target. Moreover, the warhead must be fused to detonate at a set altitude depending on the agent carried, and different agents require different concentrations and dispersals if they are to be effective. For this reason, cruise missiles fitted with spray tanks would serve as particularly effective CW delivery vehicles.

POTENTIAL TARGETS

The potential targets of chemical weapons include: troop concentrations; dispersal areas; logistics centres; command and control centres; air bases; ports; key infrastructure installations (oil and power facilities, desalination plants, etc); civilian population centres.

LIMITATIONS

Chemical weapons depend more than any other armament upon atmospheric and topographical factors, whilst temperature, weather and terrain are important factors in determining the persistence of a given chemical agent. Large quantities of agents are required to achieve high lethality, and most chemical agents degrade rapidly, allowing areas, buildings and equipment affected to be reused (even if they require decontamination first). An attacker's use of persistent agents may mean that areas an attacker wishes to move across or occupy remain contaminated, necessitating the use of protective equipment and / or decontamination for attacking forces. But warning devices against chemical attack tend to be more accurate and sensitive than those against biological attack.

Thus the military affects of chemical attacks are not significantly greater than those of conventional strikes and offer few war fighting advantages. As noted, however, the most potent effects of chemical weapons are psychological and intimidatory.
EXAMPLES

Lethal chemical agents include vesicants such as sulphur mustard and lewisite, which burn and blister the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract; choking agents such as phosgene and chlorine, which irritate the eyes and respiratory tract; blood agents such as hydrogen cyanide, which starve the tissues of oxygen; and nerve agents such as sarin and VX, which interfere with the transmission of nerve impulses, causing convulsions and death by respiratory paralysis.

Biological Weapons

Biological agents are odourless, tasteless, and when dispersed in an aerosol cloud, are invisible to the human eye because the particle size of the aerosol is extremely small (1 to 5 micrometers or microns. Weight-for-weight, biological weapons are hundreds to thousands of times more potent than the most lethal chemical weapon, meaning that even small amounts (e.g., a few kilograms) could be used with devastating effect, whereas hundreds or thousands of tons of chemical agents could be required for militarily significant operations.

Biological Weapons can be produced from widely available pathogens which may be procured for legitimate bio-medical research or obtained from soil or infected animals and humans. Moreover, many of the infectious diseases associated with biological warfare are endemic to most of the states suspected of developing a BW capability. Biological agents are thus both cheap and easy to obtain: in effect, any nation with a basic pharmaceutical industry - or even a facility such as a brewery - has a de facto capability to produce biological weapons.

EFFECTS

Biological agents contain either living organisms or their derivatives, such as toxins, which cause disease or death. Living organisms can multiply within the living targets to produce their effects, while toxins cannot reproduce themselves. Toxins are generally more lethal, and act relatively quickly causing incapacitation or death within minutes or hours. Living organisms (microbial pathogens), require incubation periods of 24 hours to 6 weeks between infection and appearance of symptoms. This incubation period places limits on their battlefield utility, but means that biological weapons can continue to have a significant impact many weeks after the initial attack (eg by causing a long-term pandemic). Likewise, this delayed incubation period may mean that a biological attack can be completed before those on the ground have realised that it has occurred, or even take place entirely covertly, the effects being confused with a natural outbreak of disease.

A biological attack can contaminate an area for between several hours and several weeks, compromising equipment and forcing troops to wear highly restrictive protective clothing (reducing their efficiency) and / or take antidotes whose side effects remain largely unknown. Biological attacks could cause widespread panic amongst both military and civilian populations. The very large number of potential casualties could place huge burdens on medical facilities and overwhelm military resources. The relatively poor warning devices available against biological attack and the potential delayed effects of some agents make mis-identification of the agent or agents used more likely, leading to the failure of defence measures. One US Army study suggested that a Scud attack with an anthrax BW warhead would see the effectiveness of military units downwind fall by 90% if the attack were not correctly detected. With prior detection, the study estimated a fall in effectiveness of only 20%. The same report noted that:

A Scud missile warhead filled with botulinum could contaminate an area of 3,700 square kilometres (based on ideal weather conditions and an effective dispersal mechanism), or 16 times greater than the same warhead filled with [the nerve agent] Sarin. By the time symptoms occur, treatment has little chance of success. Rapid field detection methods for biological warfare agents do not exist.

Perhaps even more than chemical weapons, the intimidatory nature of biological weapons is such that an attack or the threat of an attack is likely to cause wholesale disruption or paralysis of civil and economic activity in the affected area. The psychological effects on civilian populations is almost guaranteed to cause panic or terror.
METHODS OF DELIVERY

The high stresses, gravitational forces (G-forces) and heat generated by the acceleration and re-entry of ballistic missiles makes them a less-than-ideal method of delivering live biological agents. Considerable technical efforts are required to package live BW agents in a missile warhead and ensure that the agent is dispersed at the correct height and angle of delivery to create an airborne aerosol. However despite these technical challenges, recent UN revelations that Iraq may have retained 16 ballistic missiles armed with BW warheads in violation of UN Resolutions underlines the serious potential threat posed by ballistic missiles armed with BW agents.

Mounting biological dispersal systems onto cruise missiles may overcome the disadvantages associated with aircraft and ballistic missile delivery systems. An aerosol dispersal system mounted on a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or cruise missile, creating, in effect, a remotely piloted crop duster, would be an effective way of deploying BW agents over a determined target area. The U.S. experimented with and actually built a working aerosol delivery system in the 1960s. That such methods of biological weapons delivery are increasingly seen as practical is underlined by a recent CIA report into Iraq's pre-1991 CBW programme, which noted that:

Iraq worked to adapt a modified aircraft drop tank for biological agent spray operations beginning in December 1990. The tank could be attached either to a piloted fighter or to a remotely piloted aircraft that would be guided to the target by another, piloted aircraft. The tank was designed to spray up to 2,000 litres of anthrax on a target.

Along the same lines, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo Cult is reported to have planned to produce enough agent to annihilate a large Japanese city by spraying it with chemical or biological agents from a helicopter. The Cult also possessed a Russian helicopter and two radio-controlled drone aircraft that, with modifications, could have been capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons.

POTENTIAL TARGETS

The main potential targets of biological weapons include: troop concentrations; dispersal areas; logistics centres; command and control centres; air bases; ports; key infrastructure installations (oil and power facilities, desalination plants, etc), and civilian population centres. The contamination of water supplies would seriously hamper the ability of an army to wage war. Biological weapons also have naval applications. An attack on a ship would contaminate the vessel and crew, reducing or destroying its operational efficiency. This would be particularly useful against large ships that can withstand multiple conventional hits (such as the large US fleet aircraft carriers). Significantly, in exercises during the summer of 1995, Iranian forces used helicopters to spray their own ships with aerosol liquids, suggesting the development of a capability to use biological and/or chemical weapons against oil tanker movements in the strategically vital Persian Gulf.

LIMITATIONS

Unlike chemical weapons, biological agents are not as controllable or predictable in their effects and are even more dependent than chemical agents upon temperature, weather and topographical conditions. Thus there is always a major risk of contaminating the wrong area. However, most biological agents must be inhaled or ingested to be effective: unlike many chemical agents, skin contact is unlikely to cause infection, making it easier to defend against biological agents than chemical agents if the agent can be correctly detected. Most biological agents also degrade rapidly, although dry agents such as anthrax spores and some toxins, are persistent. Such agents could also pose long-lasting hazards, (anthrax spores may persist in the soil in deadly form for decades), meaning that areas an attacker wishes to move across or occupy may remain contaminated, necessitating the use of protective equipment and / or decontamination for attacking forces. The weaponisation (storage and delivery) of biological agents also poses technical hurdles.

EXAMPLES

Potential Viral agents include smallpox, yellow fever, equine encephalitis and influenza, which may be genetically modified to increase their effectiveness. Bacterial agents such as anthrax, meloidosis, pneumonic plague and glanders have incubation periods of between one and five days and are usually fatal without swift treatment. Toxins include botulinum toxin, which produces an acute muscular paralysis resulting in death of animals or humans; ricin, derived from castor bean plants whose lethality is that of nerve gasses, and mycotoxins which produce nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, skin irritation and potential fatalities.

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Weapon is a general name given to any weapon in which the explosion results from the energy released by reactions involving atomic nuclei, either fission or fusion or both.

The ‘yield’ of a nuclear weapon is a measure of the amount of explosive energy it can produce. It is the usual practice to state the yield in terms of the quantity of TNT that would generate the same amount of energy when it explodes. Thus, a 1-kiloton nuclear weapon is one which produces the same amount of energy in an explosion as does one kiloton (or 1,000 tons) of TNT. Similarly, a 1-megaton weapon would have the energy equivalent of 1 million tons (or 1,000 kilotons) of TNT. The earliest nuclear bombs, such as the two dropped over Japan in 1945 released very roughly the same quantity of energy as 20,000 tons (or 20 kilotons) of TNT. Since that time, much more powerful weapons, with energy yields in the megaton range, have been developed.

EFFECTS

Nuclear weapons are similar to “conventional” high-explosive weapons insofar as their destructive action is due mainly to blast or shock. But nuclear weapons are tremendously more powerful; nuclear explosions can be thousands or millions of times more powerful than the largest conventional detonation. In addition, the temperatures reached in a nuclear explosion are much higher than in a conventional explosion resulting in a large proportion of light and heat, generally referred to as “thermal radiation.” This is capable of causing skin burns and starting fires at considerable distances. Nuclear explosions also are different in that they are accompanied by highly-penetrating and harmful invisible rays at the time of the blast (“initial nuclear radiation”) and afterwards (“residual radioactivity”).

Depending on their yield and the height of their burst, nuclear weapons can cause the destruction of large areas and serious damage and contamination of still larger areas. Psychological effects are enormous, and long-term contamination may only be neutralised by the use of huge quantities of decontamination equipment and personnel. Destruction or disruption of infrastructure, military and economic centres and communications (caused by the electro-magnetic pulse - EMP - associated with a nuclear explosion) leads to the erosion of civil control. Large numbers of fatalities and serious casualties, coupled with long-term radiation effects, leads to massive burdens on remaining medical facilities. These destructive effects pose serious long-term recovery difficulties.

However, a ballistic or cruise missile offers distinct advantages over aircraft as a means of delivering a nuclear weapon. Both ballistic and cruise missiles are more likely to penetrate air defences and more likely to hit their targets than manned aircraft. Ballistic missiles are many times faster than an aircraft, whilst many cruise missiles can fly at very low altitudes and actively evade ground-based defences. These factors make missiles more survivable than manned aircraft. Missiles are also less expensive to maintain and operate than aircraft. In the future, these benefits may provide sufficient impetus for rogue regimes to succeed in weaponizing missile warheads either through concerted autonomous development programs, or the acquisition or theft of warheads and warhead technology from the former Soviet Union or another supplier.

There has also been much discussion of the nuclear “suitcase bomb” or other terrorist-delivered weapon. A terrorist group could try to purchase a nuclear weapon, as the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult apparently tried to do in Russia, or build a crude device on its own, which is less likely given the technological hurdles. A small, terrorist device could be used for blackmail purposes, sabotage, or to contaminate and cause chaos in a key target of a political adversary.

POTENTIAL TARGETS

The main potential targets of nuclear weapons include: hardened military targets and key political and military command-and-control centres; major troop and armour concentrations; dispersal areas; logistics centres; air bases; ports, as well as key infrastructure installations (oil and power facilities, desalination plants, etc). Major civilian population centres may be targeted in order to force dispersal of population, achieve wholesale terror and destroy the political and economic infrastructure of a nation.

LIMITATIONS

The technical difficulties and high cost of developing nuclear weapons means that few states other than the major powers are likely to obtain or build militarily significant numbers of nuclear weapons. The weaponization of nuclear material (particularly its integration into missile warheads) is difficult and risks failure or nuclear accident on friendly territory. The long-lasting radiation effects of nuclear weapons may mean that territory an attacker wishes to move across or occupy remains contaminated, necessitating the use of protective equipment and requiring substantial resources to be devoted to decontamination. An attack with nuclear weapons is also likely to cause a high number of civilian casualties and great collateral damage and any government that used nuclear weapons would thus risk retaliation in kind.

From http://www.cdiss.org/cw.htm

The History Of Chemical & Biological Weapons

From http://www.neravt.com/left/biochem.htm

400s BC.: Spartan Greeks use sulfur fumes against enemy soldiers.

1346: Crimean Tatars catapult plague-infected corpses into Italian trade settlement.

1500s: Spanish conquistadors use biological warfare used against Native peoples.

1763: British Gen. Jeffrey Amherst orders use of smallpox blankets against Native peoples during Pontiac's Rebellion.

1800s: Blankets infected with smallpox deliberately given to Native Americans, causing widespread epidemics.

1907: Hague Convention outlaws chemical weapons; U.S. does not participate.

1914: World War I begins; poison gas produces 100,000 deaths, 900,000 injuries.

1920s: Britain uses chemical weapons in Iraq "as an experiment" against Kurdish rebels seeking independence; Winston Churchill "strongly" backs the use of "poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."

1928: Geneva Protocol prohibits gas and bacteriological warfare; most countries that ratify it prohibit only the first use of such weapons.

1935: Italy begins conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), using mustard gas.

1936: Japan invades China, uses chemical weapons in war; German chemical labs produced the first nerve agent, Tabun

1939: World War II begins; neither side uses bio-chemical arms, due to fears of retaliation in kind.

1941: U.S. enters World War II; President Roosevelt pledges U.S. will not be first to use bio-chemical weapons.

1943: U.S. ship damaged by German bombing raid on Bari, Italy, leaks mustard gas, killing 1000.

1945: Germans use Zyklon-B in extermination of civilians. Japanese military discovered to have conducted biological warfare experiments on POWs, killing 3000. U.S. shields officers in charge from war crimes trials, in return for data. Soviets take over German nerve gas facility in Potsdam. The Nazis had stockpiles of nerve gas, against which the Allies had no defenses, and had also been working on blood agents.

1947: U.S. possesses germ warfare weapons; President Truman withdraws Geneva Protocol from Senate consideration.

1949: U.S. dismisses Soviet trials of Japanese for germ warfare as "propaganda." Army begins secret tests of biological agents in U.S. cities.

1950: Korean War begins; North Korea and China accuse U.S. of germ warfare--charges still not proven. San Francisco disease outbreak matching Army bacteria used on city.

1951: African-Americans exposed to potentially fatal simulant in Virginia test of race-specific fungal weapons.

1952: German chemical weapons researcher Walter Schreiber, working in Texas, exposed as a perpetrator of concentration canp experiments, and flees to Argentina.

1956: Army manual explicitly states that bio-chemical warfare is not banned. Rep. Gerald Ford wins policy change to give U.S. military "first strike" authority on chemical arms.

1959: House resolution against first use of bio-chemical weapons is defeated.

1961: Kennedy Adminsitration begins hike of chemical weapons spending from $75 million to more than $330 million.

1962: Chemical weapons loaded on U.S. planes during Cuban missile crisis.

1966: Army germ warfare experiment in New York subway system.

1968: Pentagon asks for the chance to use some its arsenal against civil rights and anti-war protesters to demonstrate the "efficacy" of the chemicals. "By using gas in civil situations, we accomplish two purposes: controlling crowds and also educating people on gas," said Maj. Gen. J.B. Medaris. "Now, everybody is being called savage if he just talks about it. But nerve gas is the only way I know of to sort out the guys in white hats from the ones in the black hats without killing any of them."

1969: Utah chemical weapons accident kills thousands of sheep; President Nixon declares U.S. moratorium on chemical weapons production and biological weapons possession. U.N. General Assembly bans use of herbicides (plant killers) and tear gasses in warfare; U.S. one of three opposing votes. U.S. has caused tear gas fatalities in Vietnamese guerrilla tunnels.

1971: U.S. ends direct use of herbicides such as Agent Orange; had spread over Indochinese forests, and destroyed at least six percent of South Vietnamese cropland, enough to feed 600,000 people for a year. U.S. intelligence source gives swine-flu virus to anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary group, which lands it on Cuba's southern coast (according to1977 newspaper reports).

1972: Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. Cuba accuses CIA of instilling swine fever virus that leads to death of 500,000 hogs.

1974: U.S. finally ratifies 1928 Geneva Protocol.

1975: Indonesia annexes East Timor; planes spread herbicides on croplands.

1979: Washington Post reports on U.S. program against Cuban agriculture since 1962, including CIA biological warfare component.

1980: U.S. intelligence officials allege Soviet chemical use in Afghanistan, while admitting "no confirmation." Congress approves nerve gas facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Iraq begins eight-year war with U.S. arch-enemy Iran.

1981: U.S. accuses Vietnam and allies of using mycotoxins (fungal poisons) in Laos and Cambodia. Some refugees report casualties; one analysis reveals "yellow rain" as bee feces. Israel bombs Iraqi nuclear reactor, leading to Iraqi decision to build chemical weapons.

1984: U.N. confirms Iraq using mustard and nerve gasses against Iranian "human wave" attacks in border war; State Department issues mild condemnation, yet restores diplomatic relations with Iraq, and opposes U.N. action against Iraq. Bhopal fertilizer plant accident in India kills 2000; shows risks of chemical plants being damaged in warfare. President Reagan orders over a half million M55 rockets retooled so that they contain high-yield explosives as well as VX gas. (The Army now claims that many of these rockets are "unstable" and leaking nerve agents.)

1985: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents. U.S. firms begin supplying Iraq with numerous biological agents for a four-year period (according to a 1994 Senate report).

1986: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents.

1987: Senate ties in three votes on resuming production of chemical weapons; Vice President Bush breaks all three ties in favor of resumption.

1988: Iraq uses chemical weapons against Kurdish minority in Halabjah; U.S. continues to maintain agricultural credits with Iraq; President Reagan blocks congressional sanctions against Iraq.

1989: Paris conference of 149 nations condemns chemical weapons, urges quick ban to emerge from Geneva treaty negotiations; U.S. revealed to plan poison gas production even after treaty signed.

1990: U.S., Soviets pledge to reduce chemical weapons stockpiles to 20 percent of current U.S. supply by 2002, and to eliminate poison gas weapons when all nations have signed future Geneva treaty. Israel admits possession of chemical weapons; Iraq threatens to use chemical weapons on Israel if it is attacked.

1991: U.S. and Coalition forces bomb at least 28 alleged bio- chemical production or storage sites in Iraq during Gulf War, including fertilizer and other civilian plants. CNN reports "green flames" from one chemical plant, and the deaths of 50 Iraqi troops from anthrax after air strike on another site. New York Times quotes Soviet chemical weapons commander that air strikes on Iraqi chemical weapons would have "little effect beyond neighboring villages," but that strikes on biological weapons could spread disease "to adjoining countries." Czechoslovak chemical warfare unit detects sarin nerve gas during air war. Egyptian doctor reports outbreak of "strange disease" inside Iraq. U.S. troops use explosives to destroy Iraqi chemical weapons storage bunkers after the war.

1992: Reports intensify of U.S. and Allied veterans of Gulf War developing health problems, involving a variety of symptoms, collectively called Gulf War Syndrome. U.N. sanctions intensify civilian health crisis inside Iraq, making identification of similar symptoms potentially difficult.

1993: President Clinton continues intermittent bombing and missile raids against Iraqi facilities; U.N. inspectors step up program to dismantle Iraqi weapons. U.S. signs U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, but approval later blocked in Senate.

1995: Japanese cult launches deadly sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo subway system.

1996: Congressional hearings on Gulf War Syndrome focuses on Iraqi storage bunker destruction, rather than other possible causes, and does not call for international investigation of symptoms among Iraqis.

1997: Cuba accuses U.S. of spraying crops with biological agents. Iraq expels U.S. citizens in U.N. inspection teams, which are allowed to continue work without Americans, but choose to evacuate all inspectors. U.S. mobilizes for military action. Senate act finally implements Chemical Weapons Convention, with a provision that "the President may deny a request to inspect any facility" on national security grounds.

1998: U.S. twice mobilizes for bombing campaign against alleged Iraqi bio-chemical weapons sites, after Iraq restricts inspector access in protest of economic sanctions. U.S. launches missile attack on pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that it alleges produces nerve gas agents-- a claim disputed by much of the inetrnational community.

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