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U.S. FORCES' ACHILLES' HEEL Pentagon's inspector general finds troops ill-prepared to carry out missions on chemicalA>iological4ainted battlefields

American troops have been so poor­ly trained to fight on a battlefield contaminated by chemical or bio­

logical warfare agents that if Saddam Hussein had used these agents in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, U.S. soldiers would have been unable to carry out their designated missions, and casualties probably would have been high. Unfor­tunately, not much has changed in the ensuing seven years.

The Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General recently surveyed 232 military units across the services and found that only 45 unit commanders on Navy surface ships were "fully integrating chemical and biological defense into unit mission train­ing." Starkly translated, this lack of realistic defense training means that most U.S. troops would not be able to survive and continue their assigned missions in a chemical/biological-tainted environment.

Secretary of Defense William S. Co­hen believes that potential adversaries "are more likely to try unconventional or asymmetrical methods such as biological or chemical weapons." They will turn to these weapons because they "know they can't win in a conventional challenge to the U.S. forces," he explains.

Easier to build, cheaper to buy, and very deadly, chemical and biological weapons "may be used and used early on future battlefields," Cohen warns. They could effectively be used to delay or deny U.S. forces access to crucial areas and to cripple forward-based forces. Such weapons could disrupt command-and-control networks and inflict higher than expected U.S. casualties. They could also influence potential coalition partners and deter them from joining fu­ture U.S.-initiated interventions.

Defense experts claim that new tech­nology has made chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them— such as ballistic missiles—available to any country or group wanting those capabili­ties. Cohen says, "Iraq is one of at least 25

countries that already has or is in the pro­cess of developing" these weapons of mass destruction. He warns that the U.S. "can't afford to allow this vulnerability of ours [to be attacked by these weapons] to turn into an Achilles' heel."

The U.S. is taking a two-pronged ap­proach to limiting its vulnerability to an at­tack by chemical and/or biological weap­ons. First, it is working with other nations to halt the spread of these weapons. And second, it is cooperating with other na­tions and funding defensive programs do­mestically to deter their use on battlefields abroad and, possibly, even in the U.S.

Part of deterrence is making certain that U.S. troops are prepared to fight and persevere on a contaminated battlefield. The Pentagon is spending $5.7 billion in fiscal 1998 for chemical/biological de­fense programs, and President Bill Clin­ton has asked for $6.2 billion in fiscal 1999. Queenie Byars, a Pentagon spokes­woman, tells C&EN that millions of these dollars are devoted to defense readiness

training, but there is no separate break­down for such training to easily discern just how much.

Is money for defense training bearing dividends? Last year, Walter Busbee, depu­ty DOD assistant secretary for counterpro-liferation and chemical/biological defense, decided to find out. He asked the Penta­gon's inspector general to see if troops were being trained to carry out defined mis­sions while employing defensive equip­ment that would allow them to fight and function in a contaminated environment.

In July, the inspector general's office re­leased its findings in a report entitled "Unit Chemical & Biological Defense Readiness Training" (www. dodig. osd.mil/audit/ reports/98-174.pdf). The inspector general concluded that except for Navy surface ships, the services are not adequately train­ing troops to fight in a tainted environ­ment. Without this realistic training, unit commanders are unable to assess their troops' readiness to do so.

The inspector general's audit found that only 45 Navy surface ships out of 232 units surveyed participated "in unit mis­sion training under realistic CB [chemical/ biological] conditions." Of the remaining 187 units studied, four had conducted no chemical/biological defense training. The other 183 units had carried out some form of unit chemical/biological defense train­ing, the inspector general found, but the "scope and duration" of that training was "typically limited, such that the training was not realistic to mission requirement."

For these 183 units, chemical/biologi­cal defense training was not integrated

Defense Secretary Cohen briefs press on proliferation.

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into mission training events such as com­bat, combat support, and command-and-control exercises. Rather, the defense training focused, for the most part, on individual task training "that was con­ducted as discrete training events."

The units surveyed varied from service to service. Most Army and Marine Corps units reviewed had conducted no integrat­ed training; that is, they didn't perform mission-essential tasks under simulated chemical/biological warfare conditions. Those units that did conduct integrated training were company-level or smaller sized units. Busbee and other military plan­ners believe that chemical/biological de­fense training needs to be undertaken in larger than company-size units. Another disturbing finding was that crews in Ma­rine air units have protective gear that is not compatible with the fixed-wing air­craft they fly, a situation the Marine Corps is now correcting.

The Navy fully integrated chemical/bio­logical defense training as part of its sur­face unit training exercises, but Navy air units had virtually no integrated training. Air Force squadrons conducted chemical/ biological defense training in the class­room, not in simulated field exercises.

Again, with the exception of the Navy surface units, assessing and reporting on chemical/biological readiness was inade­quate. Unit commanders could not deter­mine whether their units could complete wartime missions successfully on a chemical/biological-contaminated battle­field. Not only were unit commanders unable to determine their troops' state of readiness, they also, for the most part, failed to communicate this to higher lev­el decisionmakers.

Persistent problems became evident when Army battalions trained under simu­lated chemical warfare conditions at Army combat training centers. "Significant casu­alties" occurred because soldiers failed to properly employ chemical agent alarms for early warning and arrived at the train­ing centers without the proper protective gear or without an understanding of what level of protective gear to employ. Decon­tamination exercises "were not planned or executed to standard," and follow-on forc­es often crossed into contaminated areas, the inspector general found.

Busbee, who requested the audit, says he is "not totally surprised by the report." As he notes, "This is not the first report we've had that indicated [nuclear/biologi­cal/chemical] readiness problems." But he takes heart in the finding that "surface Navy had done a good job."

Better protection is at the core of the U.S. policy of deterring what Busbee calls "the emerging threat." And better protec­tion means better preparation. Busbee ad­mits that for chemical/biological defense readiness training, "we are not there yet."

In short, Busbee believes that continued "emphasis by the joint chiefs of staff and the services is needed to improve our posture for force survival when and if chemical/bio­logical warfare attacks occur."

The inspector general recommended that in their periodic training briefings, the chiefs of staff of the Army and the Air Force and the commandant of the Ma­rine Corps include reports by unit com­manders on the readiness of their units to carry out mission-essential tasks under chemical and biological conditions. He also suggested that unit commanders' as­sessments of readiness be evaluated in­ternally and externally—and that the re­sults of the external evaluations be com­municated to a higher level within the services so that noted deficiencies can be remedied. He also recommended that Navy air squadrons receive and report on chemical/biological defense training.

The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps concurred with the inspector general's findings and recommendations. The Air Force agreed with the recommendation to

use internal and external evaluations in as­sessing readiness, but it did not agree with the suggestion that evaluations be report­ed to a higher than unit commander level. The Air Force insisted that its reporting procedures were adequate to assess chem­ical/biological defense readiness. The in­spector general asked the Air Force to re­consider its position.

Geraldine M. Edwards, one of the re­port's auditors, tells C&EN that an audit follow-up group within the inspector general's office will make certain the rec­ommendations are implemented or some kind of compromise is worked out. This should occur within a year.

"Unit Chemical & Biological Defense Readiness Training" is the second of a se­ries of studies on the readiness of U.S. forc­es to function in a chemical/biological warfare environment. The first focused on chemical/biological survivability of mis­sion-essential equipment.

Although it is a given that the individu­al services be able to fight effectively on a chemical/biological-contaminated battle­field, it is essential that they be able to do so in conjunction with the other services. So the inspector general's office will next look at joint chemical/biological defense training.

Lois Ember

EPA gears up to simultaneously study, regulate ultrafine particles

The Environmental Protection Agen­cy, with the advice of a committee of the National Research Council, is

set to embark on an ambitious program of research to increase the body of knowl­edge about particulate matter in the air. Fueled with an appropriation of just over $50 million—$21 million more than the President's request for fiscal 1998 and $25 million more than its fiscal 1997 par­ticulate research budget—the agency is determined to eliminate the scientific and technical uncertainties that dogged last year's decision to set health-based regula­tory standards for airborne ultrafine parti­cles (C&EN, April 14, 1997, page 10).

The term airborne particulate matter describes a broad class of substances that occur in air as solid particles or liquid droplets. Outdoor particles come from both natural processes and human activi­ties. Some sources are forest fires, wind erosion, farming, fossil fuel combustion,

and industrial manufacturing. The parti­cles can contain—among other things-acids, biological material, heavy metals, and organic and inorganic material.

On July 18, 1997, EPA announced its revision of the national ambient air quality standard for particulate matter. This revi­sion was made on the basis of a review of the scientific literature, most of it on parti­cles 10 um in diameter and smaller (PM10). EPA believes that the finest fraction of this particulate matter—that is, those particles smaller than 2.5 um in diameter (PM2 5)— is responsible for a number of adverse health effects and even death in suscepti­ble populations. But there are actually very few data that deal directly with PM2 5. Most of the studies relied upon by the agency measured PM10, estimated the frac­tion of PM10 that is PM2 5, and extrapolat­ed to adverse human health effects.

Not only is the ambient concentration of these very small particles not well

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