Biodefense: Worldwide Threats and Countermeasure Efforts for the Department of Defense

Today's hearing is a reminder that the national security threats to our Nation do not go away or wait patiently while we try to straighten out our budget woes. Part of our job on this subcommittee is to look ahead for the threats coming down the road and for those that may loom larger in the future. Biological threats must be at or near the top of that list. Biowarfare is obviously a very troubling prospect, something that weighs heavily on all of us. And while less prevalent in the news than nuclear or chemical warfare, it is an extraordinarily lethal capability that poses a significant threat to the United States, including from terrorism. There are also many unknowns and problems unique to biowarfare, including, most obviously, the unlikelihood of an attack warning and the difficulty in crafting effective countermeasures. These difficulties are put into stark relief when we look at the use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria. Although the nerve agent sarin was used as opposed to a biological agent, the attacks in Syria nonetheless demonstrated the reality of the WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction] threat to U.S. and allied forces.