Biosecurity, Flu and Chemical Weapons updates
FAS has posted a new a Congressional Research Service report on Avian Influenza and two Biosecurity reports from the military. We also launched a revised chemical weapons resource website.
Congressional Research Service Report entitled “US and International Responses to Global Threat of Avian Flu” from May 1, 2006. It provides an up-to-date account of global H5N1-related human infections and deaths, outlines U.S. government global avian flu programs, and presents some foreign policy issues for Congress. (36 pages)
April 26, 2006 Air Force Policy Directive on Safeguarding Select Agents and Toxins. This directive lays out the Air Force policy on handling biological agents. (7 pages)
April 18, 2006 DoD Instruction on the Minimum Security Standards for Safeguarding Biological Select Agents and Toxins. (28 pages)
Finally, FAS has updated its Chemical Weapons Information Resource Page and will continue to add new content to it in the coming months.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.