Until 2020, biological warfare seemed like a remote threat to military operations and national security. Then, in March 2020, the novel SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) emerged and forced the world, including the Department of Defense (DoD), to acknowledge the calamitous potential of deadly virus pandemics.
The United States 2018 National Biodefense Strategy (NBS) warns of the need to enhance biological threat responses to prevent such detrimental effects.1 It highlights the natural, isolated outbreaks of Systemic Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and Zika viruses as potential agents on which clandestine bioweapon programs or terrorist groups seeking such programs could capitalize. The NBS outlines a plan to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats, providing defense and deterrence strategies to avert bioweapon use on American civilians or military personnel. A nation with a strong biological defense decreases its population’s vulnerability to pathogens with aggressive exposure mitigation and effective treatment measures, which thereby increase the nation’s resiliency to public health crises. Such defense capabilities change an adversary’s cost-benefit balance so that it avoids initiating a biological attack, providing deterrence from future threats. The success of these response strategies requires cooperation among government, medical, public health personnel, and the general population.
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