US soldiers can't be protected from all bioweapons, Army admits amid troubling surge in threats
The U.S. Army unveiled its plan to prepare soldiers to fight through biological attacks rather than assume every threat can be stopped.
The newly signed plan bringing biological warfare scenarios into routine combat training as artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology raise new concerns about the weapons America's adversaries could develop in the near future.
"Can we protect every soldier from every possible bio threat? Probably not," Dr. Alison Tamasi, a senior official at the Army's Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Agency, told reporters on Monday.
"We can't put them in a bubble," she added.
The shift comes as U.S. officials continue to assess whether Moscow maintains an offensive biological weapons program after a mysterious death in Russia was linked to an anti-plague facility — reviving questions of biological safety and transparency.
Still, the Army hopes their implemented plan will help prepare the force to deploy and fight in biologically contested environments by 2035.
Rather than treating outbreaks primarily as medical emergencies, the military wants commanders, intelligence officers and logistics personnel to prepare for biological threats while continuing to carry out their combat missions.
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One of the biggest changes will be bringing biological incidents into major Army combat exercises, forcing commanders to respond to potential outbreaks while continuing their other missions.
Rather than relying on specialized biological exercises, the Army wants troops across different military functions to confront biological threats as part of their regular training.
Tamasi described one scenario involving a simulated norovirus outbreak at a military port. While medical personnel worked to contain the outbreak, logistics officers would have to determine how to keep critical supplies moving.
The example illustrates a broader shift in the Army's approach: Biological threats are no longer being treated solely as medical problems but as potential disruptions to military operations that commanders must be prepared to manage.
"We need to make sure that doctrine is aligned," Tamasi said, explaining that the Army is working to establish how biodefense readiness should be assessed across the force.
The new plan, signed last week, puts into motion the Army's updated biodefense strategy released in September, which sets a goal of preparing soldiers to deploy and fight in biologically contested environments by 2035.
The first two-year implementation cycle will focus on establishing policies, improving coordination across Army organizations and developing personnel with specialized biological expertise. More advanced technologies and acquisition efforts are expected in later phases.
The effort comes amid growing concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence and biotechnology to accelerate the development of biological threats.
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Tamasi described those advances as a dual-use challenge, with technologies that can accelerate medical discoveries also potentially enabling new biological threats to emerge more quickly.
Russia remains a particular concern for U.S. national security officials. Washington has long assessed that Moscow maintains an offensive biological weapons program inherited from the Soviet Union, despite Russia's obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
The United States renounced offensive biological weapons in 1969 and is also a party to the convention, which prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons.
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Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, died Oct. 2 after developing severe pneumonia. Russian media initially reported a possible pneumonic plague infection following a suspected laboratory accident, but Russian authorities denied that an accident occurred and said testing found no evidence of plague or other high-threat pathogens.
The cause of her death remains undetermined. In an Oct. 10 update, the World Health Organization said it had found no evidence of ongoing transmission linked to the case, while noting that a confirmed diagnosis was still lacking.
Asked how much Russia's biological weapons activities informed the Army's planning, Tamasi said the strategy was based on "intelligence writ large" rather than any single adversary.
"It's not solely focused on a particular threat actor," she said.
Asked what lessons the Army had drawn from Russia's biological weapons program, Tamasi said the strategy was designed to address biological threats regardless of their origin — whether accidental, deliberate or ultimately determined not to pose the threat initially feared.
For Army commanders, she explained, the immediate priority is responding to a potential biological threat and maintaining operations, rather than determining its origin. Questions of attribution would involve the broader U.S. government.
That approach also informs how the Army intends to detect emerging threats.
Officials said the military is working to draw together information from environmental monitoring, medical facilities and intelligence reporting to identify potential biological incidents earlier.
That could include wastewater surveillance similar to monitoring used during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tamasi said. The goal is to give commanders a more complete picture of potential biological threats so they can respond before disruptions spread.
The COVID-19 pandemic also exposed the limitations of treating biological threats primarily as public health emergencies, according to Army officials, reinforcing the need for military leaders outside the medical field to incorporate those risks into operational planning.
The strategy addresses misinformation as another operational challenge, particularly when troops and commanders must make decisions about vaccines, protective measures and communications during a biological incident.
The Army has also begun rolling out biodefense seminars for senior leaders. Tamasi said one three-star board determined that senior Army leaders should receive at least an hour of instruction on biodefense and the "ground truth" surrounding biological threats.
Ultimately, the Army hopes that preparing soldiers to continue their missions despite a biological attack could also discourage adversaries from using such weapons in the first place.
Tamasi said demonstrating that biological threats would not necessarily stop American forces from fighting could reduce the military advantage an adversary might hope to gain from deploying them.