The UK Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 68

The United Kingdom has led Tripartite thinking in emphasising the spe-
cial properties of BW which not only distinguish it from other weapons
but also make it of great potential effect. These properties are the delay
between exposure and clinical symptoms, and the difficulty of achieving
any form of rapid detection. It was stated plainly by the UK representa-
tives at the 10th Tripartite Conference that the present emphasis (espe-
cially in American work) on overt on-target attack with conventional
aircraft BW cluster bombs was, in their opinion, quite wrong and was
missing the whole point of the covert potential of BW. There are two as-
pects to this covert use. Firstly, what is loosely called sabotage—the un-
detected release of an airborne BW agent in or near an important instal-
lation . . . Secondly, the possibility of covering a very large area and long
distance. This is an unproved idea, depending on the biological, mechan-
ical and meteorological considerations which are far from fully worked
out. 80
So, although the US still held out hope for a workable BW bomb, the
attention of the UK scientists had now turned to sabotage and large area
coverage. While large area coverage was unproven, according to the au-
thors it still merited further investigation as potentially a credible threat.
Referring to US tests, they argued that in
American trials as long ago as 1952 simulant material has been spread
over areas of up to 34,000 square miles. It is notable that the American
emphasis on conventional BW munitions is in despite of their pioneer
work in both “sabotage” and large area coverage. The point of impor-
tance to the present argument is that either form of attack depends on
the ability to disseminate the agents in the form that will survive expo-
sure to natural conditions, in the airborne state, for substantial periods.
And so indeed, does the conventional attack, depending in large mea-
sure on penetration into buildings to establish concentrations that are
relatively low but will persist for a long time. It is therefore of fundamen-
tal importance that as much as possible may be learned about the dis-
semination and survival of agents under natural conditions. 81
A year later, Henderson, the director of the MRE, was still attempting
to refocus everyone's attention on sabotage. Early in 1957 he reported to
the BRAB that he had attended the 11th Tripartite conference and argued