Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 67

CBRNE

(Photo by Col. F. John Burpo, U.S. Army)

CBRNE leaders and scientists observe a simulated fuel rod enrichment facility during the Scientists in the Foxhole event November
2015 at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California.

of transporting or propelling the weapon where such a
means is separable and divisible part of the weapon.”7
However, there is an increasing recognition of the expanded scope and impact of CBRNE threats and hazards.
A 2014 CWMD white paper by the Army Capabilities
Integration Center states, “the Army’s approach to
CWMD is consistent with the DOD definition and
includes the expanded scope of explosive threats resulting
in a high order of destruction. This full range of CBRNE
threats and hazards is representative of the combined
arms approach for future force capabilities development.”8
In addition to broadening the scope of explosive
yield considered, the full range of CBRNE threats
and hazards is recommended as a broader umbrella
concept for organizing, training, resourcing, and employing forces, where the WMD mission space exists
as a subset of CBRNE. Including the range of low- to
high-yield explosives to holistically characterize the
current and future range of threats and hazards better
captures the subset of critical tasks that EOD soldiers
perform in operations, including unexploded ordnance
disposal to improvised explosive device (IED) defeat.
With this perspective, for the purposes of organizing
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

Army operations, the term represented by the acronym
CBRNE should be used as the operative term that integrates and accounts more accurately for these threats
and the capabilities needed to counter them.
These perspectives are drawn from the lessons
learned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2012
and multiple explosive attacks that include the 1993
New York City bombing of the World Trade Center,
the 1995 Oklahoma City car bombing of the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building, the 1996 truck bombing of
the Khobar Tower military complex in Saudi Arabia,
the October 2000 boat bombing of USS Cole, and the
April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.9
To further illustrate this point, explosives in the
form of jet fuel, coupled with the delivery means of
an airplane, exemplified a terrorist-delivered CBRNE
event on 11 September 2001, with mass effects that
would not otherwise be formally characterized as
caused by a WMD under the DOD definition.
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
Pamphlet 525-7-19, The United States Army Concept
Capability Plan for Combating Weapons of Mass
Destruction for the Future Modular Force, 2015-2024, provides this discussion on the categorization of WMD:
Whether or not the definition of WMD, or a
definition of CWMD, will eventually include
all explosives, it is appropriate to acknowledge that future solutions developed in
response to CWMD capability requirements
must consider cross-utility for such things as
explosives detection and forensic analysis of
trace chemical residue. Any analytical capability developed for CBRN applications ought
to consider the chemical nature of explosives
as part of the requirement.10
With this expanded CBRNE/WMD perspective,
state-sponsored nuclear and chemical WMD are
considered here as a subset under the broader umbrella
concept of CBRNE threats and hazards.
While difficulty in acquiring, developing, and delivering weapons increases from chemical to biological
to radiological to nuclear, with low-yield explosives
remaining cheap and easy, accelerating technological
advancement enables a greater ease in the development
and employment of not only single threat types but
also more complex hybrid CBRNE threats delivered in
parallel or serial within a given operational area.
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