The UK Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 73

response, continued to protest about the slow progress of aircraft trials in
the UK. The board also reaffirmed “its belief that large area attack with
BW agents constituted a major threat to the country's defences, and its
profound dissatisfaction with the low priority accorded to this threat.” 96
The trials did continue, and by July 1960 a total of 12 tracer trials had
taken place, the last 2 from ships rather than aircraft. 97 These sea trials
involved releases of fluorescent particles, “simulating a breathable BW
cloud as regards particle size”—one in the English Channel and the sec-
ond in the Irish Sea. 98 The results were taken to demonstrate that an at-
tack from off the coast was a potential threat. At around the same time,
the idea that Britain would be vulnerable to a large-scale attack spurred
new efforts at the MRE to produce the means to detect such an attack.
A Reawakening of Interest
The constant struggles by the BRAB and others to raise the profile of bio-
logical warfare started to meet less resistance in the early 1960s. The new
chief scientific advisor at the Ministry of Defence, the zoologist Solly
Zuckerman, ordered a review of biological (and chemical) weapons pol-
icy in 1961. 99 The Chiefs of Staff had already asked for an operational as-
sessment of CBW and had not entirely dismissed the possibility of manu-
facturing them at some point. 100 This move had already been interpreted
positively by one BRAB member as an “awakening of interest” in the
area. Reporting to the board on his recent visit to the US, another BRAB
member, the virologist Wilson Smith, said that he “had been impressed
by the increased interest in bacteriological warfare that had resulted from
the nuclear stalemate.” 101
Zuckerman's panel was chaired by Sir Alexander Todd and given the
task of considering “the potentialities in warfare of biological and chemi-
cal agents, and to make recommendations about the scope of the pro-
gramme devoted to their study in the UK.” 102 The papers for these assess-
ments were completed by the end of the year but were deemed “too
complex” for the Chiefs of Staff. 103 In order to remedy the situation, the
War Office chief scientist, now Walter Cawood, established a subcommit-
tee of the DRPC to prepare a shorter and simpler paper.
Meanwhile the Chiefs of Staff in their operational assessment of BW
had concluded that “while we cannot foresee the need for this country in