The French Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 116

sion des Etudes et Expérimentations Chimiques et Bactériologiques de
l'Armée de Terre (CEECB). 28 The CEECB was to coordinate the efforts of
the armed forces dealing with CBW. Its role was to provide a rapid ex-
change of information among the different bodies regarding their re-
spective activities in CBW and to coordinate experiments, manufacture,
protection, and employment connected with such armaments. Among
the members listed were the commandant of special weapons, who was
to chair the CEECB, the director of the CEB, the head of the bureau
Armement et Etudes of the Army General Staff (ARMET), a representa-
tive from the Services des Poudres, a representative of the Army Veteri-
nary Service (Services Vétérinaires des Armées), and a representative of
the Comité d'Action Scientifique de la Défense Nationale (CASDN). 29 The
creation of this commission gave France's BW program a dedicated ad-
ministrative body that until 1956 continued the research begun in 1948.
In order to establish the terms of reference for this new body, Surgeon
General Costedoat drafted a report whose conclusions and technical rec-
ommendations created a broad framework for the continuation of work
on France's BW program. After providing an inventory of pre-1953 activ-
ity, the report concluded that “these findings would endorse the continu-
ation and development of experimental research and the establishment
of practical trials on the ground.” The report went on to address the broad
outline of the future program, stating that “it must be conceived in terms
of the results already obtained and in the light of working hypotheses on
the use of biological armaments,” thus sketching France's embryonic bio-
logical doctrine. In the case of tactical weapons usage, the objective must
be “to increase the seriousness of wounds from exploding devices, thus
overloading hospitals, prompting the general issue of medical prophy-
laxis (vaccines, specific serums)”; in strategic instances, the targets were
“sensitive civilian and military zones, training camps, maritime bases,
large towns, supply centers, livestock farms, and industrial centers, with
the aim of causing panic and creating multiple infection hotspots that, in
certain favorable though unforeseeable circumstances, could trigger epi-
demics or epizootics which would weaken the target's military potential,
reduce the output from arsenals and from industry, disrupt supply lines,
and deal a severe blow to livestock rearing.” The report proposed deliv-
ery using 105- and 155-millimeter shells, 120-millimeter mortars, 50-
and 250-kilogram aviation bombs, bouncing mines, and aerial dispersion.