What are the top three chemical and biological threats in today’s operational environment?
I’m going to leave identifying the top individual chemical or biological threats to the intelligence experts and I’ll speak, in more general terms, to categories of biological or chemical threats. The rapid pace of chemical and biological technology development and proliferation through the information age, as well as the globalization of technology and expertise in these areas, when combined with extremist beliefs, poses a real threat to our armed forces and nation. The great gains in knowledge made in the biotechnology sector can also make it much easier for an informed adversary to develop and deliver an effective biological attack, or to engineer or enhance biological agent lethality. Chemical technologies development is also evolving at a rapid pace, which, again, can allow an informed adversary to potentially develop existing or emerging nontraditional agents. We must also keep our focus on naturally occurring biological threats. The men and women of our armed forces are deployed
