By Andy Weber and Christine L. Parthemore
In April, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with technology industry leaders and signal his intent to lead the Department of Defense in the direction of greater innovation. Although his visit
By Andy Weber and Christine L. Parthemore
In April, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with technology industry leaders and signal his intent to lead the Department of Defense in the direction of greater innovation. Although his visit focused heavily on cybersecurity, it is critical to apply his vision to the task of preventing and preparing for crises involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As these threats can evolve quickly, testing the United States’ ability to adapt, a broad understanding of how to apply technological solutions is crucial.
Investments by the U.S. government and its international partners often focus too narrowly on invention of entirely new tools and systems. In many cases, governments do not need to invent new, “game-changing” technologies in order for technology to change the game. Effectively countering WMD threats requires not just invention, but true innovation as Carter described it, including applying existing technologies in new ways, changing processes to gain efficiencies, and finding creative applications for tools that are already available.
There are many cases in which rapid and creative use of existing and often low-tech capabilities is the fastest option for altering the trajectory of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons threats. The challenge of destroying the declared stockpile of Syrian chemical weapons proved that one of the best ways to address modern WMD threats can be simply to help an organization to rapidly use existing technologies in new ways.
This article will explore such an approach to countering WMD threats and describe how focusing more attention on innovation, especially by taking advantage of existing technologies in novel ways to rapidly prevent proliferation or use of nonconventional weapons and dual-use technologies, would be cost effective and improve the ability of the United States and other countries to respond with speed as threats evolve. Furthermore, this approach is crucial to democratizing the process of countering proliferation threats by ensuring that lower-income countries can contribute to efforts to counter WMD threats and by expanding opportunities for the private sector and individual citizens to help mitigate nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons dangers.
The Element of Time
It often seems that WMD threats are relics of past eras—ancient methods kept alive as the character of warfare modernizes. The world recently marked the 100th anniversary of modern battlefield use of chemical weapons. Use of biological means to defeat or subjugate adversaries goes back hundreds of years, possibly to ancient times. Nuclear threats are frequently described as a threat of the Cold War era more than a current challenge.
In fact, the threats from these nonconventional weapons pose some of the greatest contemporary security challenges, in part because they are often characterized by rapid evolution and a tendency to increase in urgency with little warning time.
The United States and its partners have many important baseline tools to counter WMD threats. Treaty negotiations, export control systems, arms control efforts, and long-term research and development initiatives form an important foundation for preventing proliferation and use of nonconventional weapons. Yet, the ability to act quickly as new threats emerge—often in weeks or months, not years—is critical but underappreciated. Innovation is often the best path to success.
Success With Syrian Chemicals
The Defense Department’s contribution to the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stands as a textbook example of the role rapid innovation can play in mitigating WMD threats. The stockpile of chemical weapons materials that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared to the international community in his quest for regime survival included mustard agent, ingredients to formulate sarin and VX agents, and smaller quantities of other substances used in the country’s chemical weapons program. The Assad regime stored most of the chemicals in bulk liquid form in hundreds of barrels and tanks rather than filled weapons that were ready for use. The chemicals were dispersed at sites around the country as it descended into a protracted and brutal civil war.
In late 2012, Pentagon scientists and engineers were asked to envision how any country, given the opportunity, would go about destroying chemicals like those then held by the Assad regime. Many chemical weapons ingredients can be destroyed in incinerators, but others are better or more quickly destroyed using an initial hydrolysis process to alter the chemicals into substances that incinerators can more easily handle without damage. The most dangerous 600 metric tons of Syria’s 1,300 metric tons of chemical weapons materials fell into the latter category.
Most facilities that conduct chemical weapons destruction operations are large, expensive, and built for a specific location. Removing Syria’s chemicals to one of these facilities most likely would have been impossible in the face of international legal questions and political and logistical constraints. Yet, no country in the world had an easily transportable technology that could rapidly destroy large qu