the CBRN weapon) and c) a tactical plan on how to use that weapon. Getting access to CBRN agents is not so easy. The more dangerous the agent, the more difficult it is to access. So, if a terrorist would like to use Smallpox in an attack, it means they will first need to steal the agent from one of the two places on earth where Smallpox is stored: the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US or the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia. Not an easy task. However, not all agents are difficult to obtain. Anthrax, for example, is a normal bacteria in most of the world; digging up some dead sheep often does the job. However, Anthrax dug up from the English countryside is not the same as Soviet weapon grade Anthrax; it is just not as potent.


If it reached a concentration of 70mg per m3, a human being could die after being in a contaminated room for only five minutes. You can kill a person with a tiny droplet of Sarin. Toxins such as Ricin are much deadlier, and the amount needed to be lethal is barely visible to the human eye. For bio agents, there is no ‘quantity’ of an agent. For bacteria, it is the number of colony-forming units that is used to determine dosage. However, these numbers are not simple maths. For Anthrax, for example, a lethal dose is considered to be 10,000 spores. For each gram of Anthrax, one would get 100 lethal doses of it (through inhalation). However, three of the casualties of the 2001 Anthrax attacks in the US were elderly ladies who were most likely infected as a result of receiving a letter that was contaminated in the mail sorting centre. None of these women is thought to have even inhaled 1,000 spores each let alone 10,000. Mortality rates resulting from biological agents are not a given; much depends upon the health of the victim and their sensitivity to the agent.


The Threat of CBRNe Terrorism The threat of CBRNe terrorism has two main components: the capability of terrorists to use CBRN agents and their motivation to do so. Let’s start looking at the first of these vectors, the terrorist capability. In order to execute a successful CBRN attack, the perpetrator needs to have a) a CBRN agent, b) a dispersal device (the agent and device combine together to form


April 2013 Aviationsecurityinternational


“…a list of 221 flights was published, involving around 33,000 passengers that had been potentially exposed to the radioactive substance. The aircraft were taken out of service to enable forensic


examination to be carried out. The results of the forensic tests showed very low traces of a radioactive substance onboard two of the three aircraft…”


For chemicals, digging is not a bad option either. World War I battlefields are a gold mine for unexploded ordnance, including munitions with a chemical payload. In Belgium, around 1,000 pieces of munitions with a chemical payload are found each year. During the insurgency in Iraq, it is claimed that the insurgents (unknowingly) used mustard gas against Coalition forces when they exploded old munitions as roadside bombs. This means that one can sometimes find chemical weapons on the side of the road; either as a failed roadside bomb or as a shell dug up by a Belgian farmer. Some chemical agents also have a ‘normal’


www.asi-mag.com 21


The Litvinenko Case


The Litvinenko case revealed that the CBRN threat to aviation stretches beyond the danger of terrorist attacks with CBRN agents. The case proved that only a small quantity of a CBRN agent can have a devastating impact. In November 2006, former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died as a result of poisoning by Polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. Before he fell ill on 1 November, he had been walking around with radioactive material in his body that had been injected with a small pellet in his leg. During the investigation into his death it was learned that a number of British Airways aircraft that flew between Moscow and London had been contaminated with the radioactive material. The UK government identified three of BA’s Boeing 767 short haul aircraft as part of the investigation. A list of 221 flights was published, involving around 33,000 passengers that had been potentially exposed to the radioactive substance. The aircraft were taken out of service to enable forensic examination to be carried out. The results of the forensic tests showed very low traces of a radioactive substance onboard two of the three aircraft. This means that the risk to public health proved to be low. However, the incident had serious societal impact and painfully revealed the vulnerability of civil aviation to CBRN incidents. What is most important to realise is that the amount of agent used to kill Litvinenko would not have showed up on any detection system had these been in place.


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