Why We Need to Talk about WMD

First we have to convince Congress to wake up

[Preface] I was done with this post, but I saw this article on the Atlantic Council website and thought it was the perfect intro to illustrating how poorly the national security community talks about countering WMD. MG (ret) Bradley Gericke, a former armor officer, and Donna Wilt, formerly posted at USANCA, are concerned about adversarial nations using nuclear weapons on the battlefield and believe that the Army’s “generation of neglect toward its readiness to counter such weapons of mass destruction” is why we’re not ready to fight and win on a nuclear battlefield.

Now I agree that the Army’s attitude toward countering WMD has significantly degraded, and I also agree that the U.S. military is ill-prepared to fight a nuclear conflict that escalates from a conventional military crisis. But I would never suggest that the concept to counter weapons of mass destruction was the same thing as nuclear deterrence and nuclear weapons operations. They are and should be considered as distinct but complementary operations. This article continues a bad practice by many national security professionals who say “WMD” when they only mean “nuclear.” It’s bad form. [end preface]¹

One of the most difficult parts of federal policy work (and by difficult, I mean hard to institutionalize as good practice) is where the federal government evaluates its efforts to achieve its policy objectives and make appropriate changes as needed to correct its course as necessary. If the elements by which people conduct program assessments are eliminated, then you see an inertia take place a where the federal programs just go on forever just because they’ve always been there. That’s not a good deal for the public. But after the U.S. government failed to find a active WMD program in Iraq (circa 2005), interest in assessing this national security topic began to wane.

In 2007, the DoD Inspector General examined the department’s implementation of its combating WMD programs and found them wanting. Specifically, DoD needed to:

• coordinate the work of the 40 offices involved in combating WMD

• clearly identify the use of $917 million budgeted in FY 2004 for programs aimed at combating WMD

• consistently report on whether it accomplished the goals for combating WMD and

• propose legislation that provided for interagency coordination on combating WMD issues

There was some positive change. The DoD did update its DoD directive on responsibilities to combat WMD, included significant notes about WMD in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (and we never saw as much emphasis in later QDRs), approved a “National Military Strategy to Combat WMD” (which was in the works anyway), approved USSTRATCOM to be the lead for integrating and synchronizing DoD combating WMD efforts (which USSTRATCOM immediately handed off to DTRA), and standardized the definition of WMD (notably, high-yield explosives are not WMD). Since then, things have not been so positive.

In 2008, when Congress decided to terminate the requirement for a “Report on Activities and Programs for Countering Proliferation and NBC Terrorism” effective 2013, I did not speak out - although I was a mid-level counterproliferation analyst, I was never a fan of the report’s “Areas for Capability Enhancement” list.²

In 2013, when Congress eliminated the Section 721 requirement for an “Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions,” I did not speak out because I was not an arms control wonk.³

In 2016, when Congress eliminated the requirement for a “DoD Chemical and Biological Defense Annual Report to Congress” effective 2021, I did not speak out because I was no longer working as a Beltway chem-bio defense analyst.⁴

In 2019, when the Department of Defense terminated the DTRA Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, there was no one left to speak for me as a counter-WMD analyst.

In 2022, DoD did address WMD in its National Defense Strategy. “Terrorists remain interested in using WMD in attacks against U.S. interests and possibly the U.S. homeland. Dual-use knowledge, goods, and technology applicable to WMD continue to proliferate.” Also, “It is critically important that the Joint Force can fight and win in a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN)-contaminated environment.” Just don’t look for evidence of the U.S. government’s progress toward those goals.

In 2020, DoD created a “Countering WMD Unity of Effort Council” so that the OSD civilians across the department would talk with the military leadership on WMD issues, notably concerned about the military’s readiness in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. They met occasionally to talk - and talk - and talk some more - but I’m not sure they really did anything other than applaud the work on a Biodefense Posture Review (which was a horrible product) and create a new DoD strategy for countering WMD that was passable (even if the armed services ignored it). Meantime, the DoD CB Defense Program is working hard to develop countermeasures to fentanyl poisoning and to fund pandemic preparedness efforts.

The General Accountability Office is one of Congress’s arms to report on how the U.S. government is doing on particular issues. The last GAO report of interest related to DoD counter-WMD efforts was written in 2010, when it recommended actions needed to track budget execution for counterproliferation programs and to better align resources with combating WMD strategy. The GAO thought that the Counterproliferation Program Review Committee (CPRC) should do more to highlight appropriations and expenditures as well as prioritize shortfalls. Oh, did I forget to mention, the CPRC is the agency responsible for that “Report on Activities and Programs for Countering Proliferation and NBC Terrorism” that Congress highlighted in 2008 to cease its efforts in 2013? So there is no tracking budget execution for counterproliferation or counter-WMD programs.

The Congressional Research Service has been a little busier, maybe because they proactively investigate issues of congressional interest while the GAO goes where they are directed to investigate. Most of its WMD coverage relating to DoD interests focus on adversarial nations’ nuclear weapons programs or arms control and nonproliferation activities. The exceptions are a study on chemical weapons related to the Syrian use of sarin in 2013 and the Russian use of Novichok agents in 2018 and 2020. I use this CRS report dated 2008 - “Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons and Missiles: Status and Trends” - as a reference for teaching. It’s a really good assessment as an open-source reference and I wish the CRS would update it today.

Congress used to have an Office of Technology Assessment when they understood that they might have difficulty understanding technologies of military concern such as weapons of mass destruction. Before Newt Gingrich killed the office in 1996, they wrote this very nice report on “Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Risks” and “Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Nothing like it today to guide congressional discussions on this topic, which is reflected in the lack of any serious congressional discussion on this topic, even in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

So other than listing to this old man yell at the sky, why should we talk about WMD? A colleague referred this article to me in which the author makes the argument that large drone swarms should be categorized as weapons of mass destruction. While I was initially skeptical, I grew increasingly convinced, at the least, that they should be examined under the law of armed conflict as unconventional weapons with mass casualty capabilities. The author notes:

It is an established principle of customary international law that weapons which are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets are prohibited and that their use would amount to an indiscriminate attack, banned under customary law and under article 51(4)(a) of Additional Protocol I (API) of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

On the other hand, the principle of proportionality (article 51(5)(b)) refers to the proscription to cause excessive incidental or involuntary harm to the civilian population in relation to the military advantage anticipated. Notably, a direct attack on civilians, in violation of the principle of distinction (API article 48, 51(2), 52(2)), may be inferred from the indiscriminate character of the weapon used, particularly if the “incidental” harm is excessive. 

The scalability of drone swarms, that is, their possibility to vary in size, ranging from just a few units to thousands, is what increases their potential for harm. Thus, a drone swarm becomes a WMD when it is large enough to meet the same threshold as other CBRN armaments in terms of destructive capabilities, regardless of the munition used. 

On this note, the author argues that large drone swarms will be inherently indiscriminate and disproportionate. Once the swarms scale in the thousands, its operator’s cognitive capacity would simply fail to meaningfully control the sheer number of drones. This loss of control makes the drones intrinsically unpredictable, causing failures to be infinitely possible and, in some instances, even inevitable.

My concerns about opening up the term “WMD” or unconventional weapons to weapons other than nuclear, biological, and chemical, has largely been one about 1) scale of the attack being significantly high enough to warrant an arms control focus, and 2) official (legal) designation by the United Nations as being an unconventional weapon. But here we have a strong argument that references international law. And to the author’s credit, she notes this exact problem that we have no quantitative measure for what constitutes “mass destruction” or “mass casualties.”

Although currently there is no specific threshold on the required level of destruction for any weapon to be considered a WMD, the scalability of drone swarms could easily meet any of the generally accepted criteria in this regard. Granted, a small cluster of drones may not be considered as WMD, unless they are equipped with CBRN. Actually, in said scenario those drones would only be vehicles, not WMD themselves.

It’s a very solid and smart argument, and it’s a short paper so I encourage you to take a look at it. The only challenge is that it will never gain traction in the United States because the White House, DoD, and Congress are increasingly eschewing the modern threat of WMD and how the U.S. military should address them.⁵ The term “WMD” has lost a lot of its cache but I will say that the arms control community is about the only group who could still use the term correctly. Maybe it’s a topic worth discussing.

1. I really want to emphasize that the very large U.S. nuclear enterprise does not give two shits about countering WMD operations and its very small technical community. The nuclear operators understand that nuclear weapons are the most significant existential threat to the nation, and they don’t care about CBRN defense readiness, supporting arms control and nonproliferation activities, or incident response. Countering WMD has always been about the threat of small nations with CB weapons and/or a very small nuclear arsenal. The nuke guys know it and they don’t talk counter-WMD, they talk nuclear options.

2. Public Law 110-181, National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008, section 1256, extended the termination of the Counterproliferation Program Review Committee from 2008 to 2013. The addendum to its 2011 report is their last report of record.

3. Public Law 112-277, Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2013, section 310, repealed the requirement for the report because the intel community said the topic would be covered in two or three sentences within its unclassified annual threat assessment reports. Also in 2013, all kinds of excitement about Syria’s chemical weapons program, evidently did not move Congress to reconsider killing these two reports.

4. Public Law 114-328, section 1061, National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, with no clear rationale other than Congress was getting too many DoD reports and wanted to cut back on what they thought was too much information. Popular saying in the military, “An organization does well only the things the boss checks.” Now no one checks what we do in CBRN defense.

5. I will note for the record that the GAO and CRS has provided Congress with a lot of reports on WMD with regard to DHS’s efforts, but that’s because some congressional representatives like to knock DHS about how it spends its money. It’s not as if Congress has adequately evaluated DHS’s counter-WMD efforts and resourced it to be successful. But at least DHS is getting attention, which is more than what DoD’s counter-WMD issues get.