Pentagon Reexamining How It Addresses Chem-Bio Threats.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

BALTIMORE -- The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic--which has killed more than 700,000 Americans--quickly and ferociously brought home the dangers and perils posed by biological threats and has prompted the Defense Department to bolster its ability to combat them in the future.

While not new--history books remind readers of the Plague and Spanish influenza--bio threats, along with chemical, radiological and nuclear hazards, have been thrust into the spotlight due to the crisis.

To address these evolving perils, the Pentagon is revamping how it tackles CBRN defense and is working to inject new technologies--such as artificial intelligence and machine learning--into its portfolio. Officials hope the move will put the United States in a better position should the unthinkable happen--again.

Those working in the CBRN field find themselves in a unique time, said Army Col. Chris Hoffman, principal director in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for chemical and biological defense.

"We've seen smaller pieces of this in 2001 in the wake of the anthrax mailings and in 2014 and 2015 with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa," he said in August during the National Defense Industrial Association's Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense Conference and Exhibition in Baltimore. "However, we've never found ourselves with the audience that we currently have."

"We're seizing that opportunity," he added.

Officials must execute necessary changes to honor the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died of COVID-19, he said. "We can honor that sacrifice and that loss by ensuring that their descendants don't suffer the same fate," he said.

The pandemic has revealed gaps in the nation's information-sharing processes when it comes to biodefense, Hoffman said.

"We've got lots of information, but... we don't necessarily have all the nodes connected well," he said. "That network and backbone is not quite there yet."

The Pentagon is working with its international and interagency partners to improve its integrated early warning systems to close that gap, he noted.

In that same vein, it is also working more closely with the intelligence community. Much of the information about CBRN threats has traditionally been held at a high classification level, which is not accessible to some relevant parties, Hoffman added.

"We've been working very hard with our intelligence partners to... digest that and operationalize it so that we've got clear...