ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — Every year since 2018, the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center — DEVCOM CBC — has helped the Defense Threat Reduction Agency plan and execute an in-the-field user assessment of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear technology called Chemical and Biological Operational Analysis. This year, CBOA was held at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina from April 13 to 18, and DEVCOM CBC was in the thick of it.

CBOA is funded under the Chem-Bio Defense Program and executed by the Joint Science and Technology Office of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA. It brings technology developers from government agencies, industry and academia together with warfighters in order to put new technologies into warfighters’ hands. Warfighter feedback provides vital input to technology developers, enabling them to make improvements and correct shortfalls.

At Camp LeJeune, warfighters put these protypes through their paces in realistic field scenarios in which warfighters used them to interrogate mock unknown CBRN weapons caches. After running through each scenario, the warfighters gave the technology developers very specific feedback on what worked, what did not and how they could be improved.

That feedback is often simple but important, such as, “The labeling of the buttons on the chemical agent detection device is confusing.” It can also lead to new innovations, such as, “Can I mount the device on my helmet so that my hands are free?” Feedback can also include how warfighters are taught to use the new equipment, such as “Most of the people in my unit are visual learners, can you make a video version of the user’s manual?”

Clare Hamilton, a DEVCOM CBC program analyst, has supported CBOA since its inception. This year, she managed the Concept Tent during the CBOA event where technologies under development but not mature enough to use in the scenarios were displayed. Starting last October, she helped evaluate all the candidate technologies submitted by the technology developers and coordinated their participation in the Concept Tent. Of the 19 technologies displayed on tabletops in the tent this year, five were developed by DEVCOM CBC.

Some of the tasks DEVCOM CBC personnel took on were highly technical. David Glynn, a DEVCOM CBC liaison officer to the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, assisted as a “lane walker” at one of the scenario locations. It is a role that requires a keen knowledge of both CBRN technology and the way the scenario was designed.

“It was my responsibility to ensure that the warfighters participating in the scenario were trained in the proper use of the assigned new technology. I also ensure all users were at the right location at the right time in order to start the missions,” said Glynn. “While conducting missions, I made sure that every technology was used in the manner it was designed to be used. I also ensured the right simulants were in place in order to properly trigger a response form the technology.”

DTRA organizers have used lessons learned over time to steadily improve CBOA’s value to both technology developers and warfighters. This year’s event included two full days of warfighter training on the prototype technologies before the actual scenario run-throughs.

There were six scenarios in all, spanning chemical, biological, and pharmaceutical-based agents, as well as radiological threats. The scenario participants, 110 in all, included U.S. Special Forces, Marines, Soldiers, Airmen, Coast Guard, and Custom and Border Patrol members. At the end of each scenario, warfighters shared their evaluations of the new CBRN technologies in both face-to-face discussions and by filling out detailed questionnaires. As the DTRA project manager for the event, Markham Smith, put it, “We want technology developers to make their improvements while the clay is still wet.”

DEVCOM CBC Director Michael Bailey attended the event and was pleased with what he saw. “At CBOA we get to see early science and technology that will pay off in time. Many technologies we and others have brought over the years have been licensed to industry for production and are now fielded,” he said. “CBOA is able to do this because of the wide range of organizations it brings together, agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, defense research laboratories, the services and many different technology developers from industry. That makes CBOA a big contributor to the nation’s CBRN defense. I appreciate that DTRA uses our help for this extraordinary event every year.”

By Brian Feeney

Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD — The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC) Chemical Biological Applications and Risk Reduction business unit, known as CBARR, provides field response for recovered chemical munitions all over the country and around the world. Sometimes bioweapons munitions turn up, too. Robert Malone, the CBARR Plans and Assessments Branch chief, has a plan for that, he is writing a field reference guide for recovered bioweapons.

“We’ve had a field reference guide for chemical weapons since the mid-1990s,” Malone said. “It’s called the U.S. Chemical Weapons and Related Material Reference Guide. But there’s not one for biological weapons and related material, and that has always surprised me, so I decided to do something about it.”

What brought this need home for Malone is what happened at a field operations site at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Recovery team members encountered E-61 bomblets. “The CBARR project manager for this field operation, George Noya, came to me because he knew that I had done some extensive research on bioweapons some years back,” Malone said. “That provided me with some good background, but I also got help from a true CBC expert in this area, Chris Whalley, a Center subject matter expert in biological weapons.”

Malone and Noya went to Whalley’s office. Whalley was able to tell them what the item was, its delivery system, its potential agent fills, and he even had an unfilled example of one sitting in his office that they could hold and examine.

“That was enormously helpful to us, but then two things occurred to me,” Malone recalled. “First, why don’t we have this kind of detailed knowledge for the broad range of bioweapons in a form that can be shared? Second, Chris will retire soon, so how can we preserve that knowledge?”

DEVCOM CBC’s mission is to provide innovative chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) defense capabilities to enable the joint warfighters’ dominance on the battlefield and interagency defense of the homeland. It has programs with sources of seed money available to fund good ideas. Through the ‘Quick Empowerment leads to Successful Tomorrows’ program, or QUEST for short, projects of any size from $5,000 to $100,000 tied to the Center’s mission are considered. Applicants get ten minutes to pitch their ideas before the Center’s Innovation Council members, followed by five minutes for questions.

In 2023, Malone submitted his idea, made his pitch and was selected to receive a $22,000 grant to begin work on a concise, easy-to-use field manual. He pulled together a team of CBC colleagues which included Whalley plus Mindy Soethe and Andrew Bailey. Although they were frequently away performing field responses at CBARR’s many project sites, they were able to reach the 40 percent mark over the course of a year.

The manual, thus far, includes biological weapon types, the history of their development and use plus information on their likely prevalence. Compiling this data is a slow, meticulous process, but the team members believe that the usefulness of that data warrants the effort.

Malone and his team submitted a request for funding to finish the field guide and at QUEST 24 Pitch Day in April they gave their pitch to the Innovation Council. They were persuasive, the Innovation Council members gave them a QUEST grant of $25,000, enough to finish the job. As soon as they complete it, they will make it available to CBARR field teams as well as the rest of the Center.

By Brian Feeney