The UK Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 53

able measure whereby strategic effects may be gauged or compared.” 23
Additionally, a telling draft contribution to the Chiefs of Staff 1949 Re-
port on Biological Warfare put the complementarity philosophy in clear
terms:
We assume that, as a party to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, this country
will not initiate biological warfare but will resort to its use only as a retal-
iatory measure. However, lest over-optimistic results should be expected
from retaliation on a massive scale, it should be borne in mind that the
large-scale use of biological warfare from the air as a weapon of war has
not been tried nor will it have been possible to test experimentally its ef-
fect on men. In these circumstances it would be unwise to expect deci-
sive results from an all-out offensive with such a totally untried weapon.
It should therefore be regarded, not as a competitor with the other types
of weapon in our armoury, but as a complementary weapon to be used
when its peculiar characteristics can be fully exploited. 24
The first Soviet atomic bomb trial in September 1949, which was re-
ceived rather more calmly in Britain than in the US, 25 did not appear, at
least initially, to shake these military priorities. Not long after the test ex-
plosion the BWS considered the state of existing intelligence about Soviet
biological weapons and concluded:
While it was fully realised that the Joint Intelligence Committee could
not be more specific in their appreciation of the threat . . . the general
feeling was that the USSR had considerable leeway to make good before
that country would be in a position to employ this weapon offensively;
nevertheless in the light of recent events, the Joint Intelligence Commit-
tee's broad conclusion could not be lightly disregarded, namely that the
USSR could achieve the United States level of production of 1945 by
about 1952. 26
Here, as elsewhere, such assessments were frequently based on the as-
sumption that Soviet capabilities were similar to those of the US and UK.
In direct response, the BWS recommended a “firm and consistent policy
for research.” 27 The subcommittee also felt that there was no need to
change priorities from those adopted by the DRPC in 1947. Rapid detec-
tion and “development of, and production research on, selected agents
and weapons for strategic use” remained of “supreme” importance for