Blue Ribbon Review
of the
TMD Lethality Program
and

Chemical and Biological Warheads

December 14, 1992

Prepared for:
Defense Nuclear Agency under Contract Number DNA001-88-C-0046
I. Introduction

At the request of Dr. George Ullrich, Deputy Director of the
Defense Nuclear Agency, a "Blue Ribbon Review" of the TMD
Lethality Program was initiated in January of 1992. A group of
consultants was assembled by Logicon RDA under their SETA Contract
Number DNA001-88-C-0046 to perform the review. The group included:

Dr. George Abrahamson
Chief Scientist, United States Air Force

Dr. Wallace Deen
Central Intelligence Agency (ret.)

Dr. Arlen Field
Kaman Sciences Corporation

Dr. Milt Gillespie
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Dr. David Huxsoll
Louisiana State University

Dr. Cyrus Knowles
JAYCOR

Mr. Ken Kreyenhagen
California Research & Technology, Inc.

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
The Rockefeller University

Major General Peter Olenchuk
U.S. Army (ret.)

Dr. Michael Frankel of the Defense Nuclear Agency acted as the
Government Coordinator, and Mr. Kreyenhagen of CRT acted as the
Technical Coordinator of this project. Dr. David Gakenheimer of
Logicon RDA acted as the Executive Secretary, and he and

Mr. Kreyenhagen compiled this report. Biographical sketches of all
of these people are given at the end of this report.

The review was initiated by having the team of consultants attend
the TMD part of the LTH-5 Semi-Annual Review Meeting at Fort Bliss
on March 2 and 3, 1992. Subsequent to that, a series of topical
meetings was organized to address specific subjects requested by
the consultants. In particular, the following meetings were held:

April 20 and 21, 1992 at DNA Headquarters
ABO Threat Overview, Sharon Watson, AFMIC
TMD Program Overview, Maj. Ken Bradley, DNA/SPSP
Bulk Chemical Breakup, Norm Banks, SAIC
May 7, 1992 at Battelle

Plans for Biological Warhead Lethality Program,
Carl Alexander & staff, BCL

ne l nd 1 199? at Kaman ien Huntsvill AL

TMD Threat Overview, Jim Foshee, DIA/MSIC
Chemical Warhead Program Overview, Bob Becker, USASDC
Sled Tests, Steve Mullins, TBE
Hydrocode Calculations, Nasit Ari, KSC
ABO Warhead Structural Breakup, Ed Rush, KSC
Live Agent Tests Discussion, Bob Becker, USASDC
TMD Assessment, Julius Lilly, USASDC
Kill Criteria Development, Richard Jackson, KSC
Impact Damage Models, Jeffrey Elder, KSC
TMD Systems Lethality Assessment, Becky Scrip, MEVATEC
Atmospheric Dispersal, Julius Lilly, USASDC «&
Steve Diehl, KSC

x Ted Logicon RDA (W i
Closed working session

In this report, we present the technical and programmatic issues
identified by the consultants and their recommendations to address
these issues. The next section under this tab is a summary of the
issues and recommendations from the entire team of consultants as
prepared by Dr. Gakenheimer and Mr. Kreyenhagen for the
convenience of the readers. The individual positions of the
consultants, which in some cases have a different emphasis than
the summary, are presented in the remainder of this report.

The consultants only had time to review the parts of the TMD
Lethality Program that pertain to chemical and biological warhead
threats carried by ballistic missiles. There are other theater
missile threats, including nuclear warheads, HE warheads, and
various warheads carried by cruise missiles. Lethality against
these threats is of equal (or possibly more) importance, and
involves some different phenomenology. Tasks addressing these
threats should be reviewed in the future. (Note, for example, that
low-flying cruise missiles may actually be the preferred way of
delivering chemical and biological agents.)

The budget for the TMD Lethality Program has been ramping up very
quickly from about $1.0 million in FY90 to $27.0 million in FY92,
and the biological part of the program just got started in FY92.
As a result, the program has been changing very rapidly, and some
of the consultants' ideas have already been implemented or will be
before this report is distributed. As another consequence of the
rapidly evolving program, new data are coming in weekly which
could modify some of the consultants’ recommendations. In
addition, we understand that some lethality work may be ongoing in
the interceptor development programs themselves. The consultants
did not review this work, nor work being funded by SDIO overseas.
II. Summary of Issues and Recommendations

1. The fundamental objectives of the program are not clearly
defined. The TMD lethality program needs to have three
objectives:

o Support of TMD systems by quantifying lethal effects of
particular kill mechanisms against expected threats (e.g.,
impacts of hit-to-kill vehicies into threat warheads at
different velocities).

o Build longer range technical base needed for lethality
assessments against undefined future threats.

o Provide independent assessments of the effectiveness of
interceptor systems.

It appears that only the first of these objectives is presently
being addressed by the DNA program. This narrow focus may reflect
influence from the current system developers. However, defense
against ballistic and cruise missiles is a long term issue that
should involve a broad range of potential (but realistic) threats
and innovative interceptor warhead technologies to defeat them.

Recommendation la: In coordination with SDIO, a clearer set of
objectives needs to be established for DNA's TMD Lethality
Program. These objectives should meet the requirements of TMD
systems, and should also provide methodologies and a technical
foundation for lethality assessments against a full range of
potential threats. DNA should position itself as the lethality
technology leader.

2. The program plan would be much stronger if it were based on
system analyses and sensitivity studies to define critical issues.
We did not see a list of interceptor performance/design
constraints and tradeoffs to be considered (i.e., intercept
altitude, impact velocity and mass, etc.), nor a list of the
critical lethality issues being addressed, nor a list of program
tasks with their rationale and technical interconnection. (We did
see a very complicated flow chart of program elements from SDIO,
but it lacks the rationale for the efforts.) It may be that the
existing program plan reflects good intuition about what is
important, but system analyses and sensitivity studies are needed,
especially at this relatively early stage in the program, to
define which of the lethality uncertainties are of major
importance to systems. It is also unclear how this program
interfaces with the systems development programs. Are those
programs relying on the DNA program for lethality data and
assistance in evaluating various warhead options, or are they
doing their own lethality programs in parallel?
Recommendation 2a: Develop a more complete program plan with
clear objectives, tasks, and well-defined products. This
development should involve system analyses and sensitivity studies
to help identify and prioritize the critical lethality issues.
This planning should also involve interfaces with the interceptor
developers and architectural studies for the system analyses and
definition of interceptor performance/design contraints and
tradeoffs. There should be short term products such as
assessments of specific interceptor warheads against specific
targets using "best estimates" for all the input parameters with
error bars. There should also be longer term technology products,
like comprehensive assessment tools which allow analyses of a
range of possible threat designs and interceptor designs.

Recommendation 2b: A crisp briefing package should be prepared
for the Task Manager to describe his program, and a Technical
Requirements Document (TRD) should be written for distribution to
all the program participants and users of the data.

3. The TMD lethality program is relatively large and complex,
involving a number of disparate technical disciplines and program
elements. By comparison with other technical programs at DNA, the
staff which is responsible for the TMD lethality program is quite
limited and spread very thin.

Recommendation 3a: Enlarge the in-house staff at DNA to assist
the TMD Lethality Task Manager in managing this highly complex,
multi-faceted program. Provide him personnel with expertise in all
the major technical areas important to this program including the
chemical and biological areas as well as shock physics.

4. Past work on ABOs is not being used as much as it should be in
the BW part of the lethality program. The U.S. had a biological
weapons program from 1943 to 1969, and a number of different
bomblets were designed using different materials (e.g., aluminum,
steel and plastic) and different dispersal techniques (forced and
natural). Although only a few of these designs ever reached
production, prototypes of many of the others were tested success-—
fully and their designs are in the archives. These designs should
be considered in the lethality program (see threat issue below).

In addition, simulants were developed for many of the ABOs and
deployed safely outdoors as part of threat definition and
detection programs. At the end of the U.S. offensive program,
methods were developed to destroy the ABOs in storage. This
information could be very useful in planning lethality experiments
on ABO warheads. There is no evidence that this past experience is
being used in the present program.
Further, chemical and physical properties of many of the agents
and simulants are available along with information on atmospheric
transport and degradation as well as information on shock effects
from burster charges used to break the bomblets open and disperse
the agents. This information could also be very useful to the
lethality program.

Recommendation 4a: Task the Chemical Warfare/Chemical and
Biological Defense Information Analysis Center (CBIAC), or some
other similar organization, to collect, critique, organize and
assemble for distribution to the program participants the past
data on biological weapons that may be of use to the lethality
program. The archives at Fort Detrick, Dugway, and other
facilities used for biological weapons development should be
searched inasmuch as a lot of past biological work is not in the
DTIC system because it had restricted distribution. The same kind
of literature search should be done for chemical weapons, if it
has not already been done.

5. The need for testing with real biological agents has not been
demonstrated. "Live" simulants for pathogens, with very similar
chemical and physical properties, have been developed under past
programs. Pending the completion of sensitivity studies to
evaluate the effects of uncertainties and variations in
properties, these simulants can be used in lethality experiments.

The variations in the response of different strains of specific
agents to different stimuli will in many cases be as large as the
variations between an agent and its simulant. TMD lethality
should not depend on subtle variations in properties.

Shock propagation properties of biological agents are potentially
important to assessing lethality of kinetic energy kill devices,
since these properties will determine the pressure-time histories
and temperature-time histories to which agents will be exposed,
and also the depth to which shocks propagate into a mass of agent.
Measurements of shock Hugoniot relationships can be undertaken to
define the shock propagation properties of agents. However, such
properties are likely to be dominated by the packing density of
the agents (i.e., whether they are dry, very porous powders or in
water). In addition, the uncertainties associated with shock
propagation through the agent in one submunition may be dominated
-by the uncertainties associated with shock propagation from one
submunition to another and through a cluster of submunitions.

Neutralization of biological agents may not be critical if the
threat warheads are intercepted, broken up and the agents
aerosolized and dispersed at sufficiently high altitudes (15 km or
greater) so the agents become diluted and never reach the ground
in harmful concentrations and/or stay aloft long enough (days to
weeks) to be destroyed by ultraviolet radiation. Neutralization is
more likely to be important in low-altitude intercepts of cruise
missile threats and, possibly, in the case of missile-based
threats, if microencapsulation is employed to afford protection
against ultraviolet radiation. Small-scale laboratory experiments
on real agents may eventually be required to address some of the
neutralization issues, but a clearer plan and rationale for them
is needed.

Finally, simulants are not as well known for toxins. However, we
do not have any reason to believe that acceptable simulants cannot
be found for the lethality program.

Recommendation 5a: Compare the physical, thermal, chemical, and
biological properties (and their natural variations) of real
agents (pathogens and toxins) with simulants. Conduct sensitivity
studies to identify the properties of importance to lethality, and
to assess the consequences on lethality of uncertainties in the
properties and of variations in the properties between different
strains of agents and between agents and their simulants.

Specific sensitivity studies on shock Hugoniot properties should
be conducted taking into consideration various agent packing
densities and different submunition designs and stackups inside
the warhead.

Recommendation 5b: Pending examination of the relevant properties
of agents and available simulants and the sensitivity studies,
develop plans for lethality tests which use only simulants. Defer
plans for tests with real agents until a strong need is identified
and documented. Evaluation of the adequacy of simulants for the
lethality program will require consideration of microbiology,
physical and atmospheric chemistry, and shock physics.

We understand that the Army, under direction from SDIO, has
changed plans and decided not to conduct tests with real
biological agents at the present time. We are pleased that the
real agent testing has been deferred until the appropriate
sensitivity studies can be conducted to justify it.

Early in the review we heard preliminary plans for measuring shock
Hugoniots on live agents using small lenticular samples. This is a
very difficult measurement, particularly in very porous materials.
If there is a need for such measurements, in either real agents or
simulants, DNA should employ people who have the experience to
make these types of measurements. The experimental and data
analysis plans should be carefully reviewed.
Recommendation 5c: With the results of the simulant survey,
sensitivity studies and programmatic implications in hand, request
the National Academy of Sciences to review the ABO lethality
program and to comment on whether real agent testing is needed,
and if so, at what stage of the program.

Editorial Note: Two of the Blue Ribbon Consultants had other
views of the need for tests with real biological agents.

Dr. Knowles expressed concern as to whether all the critical
lethality issues could be resolved with simulants and he
recommended doing a few tests with real agents early in the
program, ,

Dr. Lederberg did not attend the meeting at Battelle where the
plans for the ABO part of the lethality program were reviewed. He
did subsequently review this report and said that he concurred
with it in every detail on which he is an expert, although he
cautioned that (1) relevant parameters on real agents should and
can be carefully measured in small laboratory scale experiments;
(2) there are some underlying assumptions about the decay of
biological agents in the atmosphere that are not well understood;
(3) we must also consider scenarios in which attacks are made at
night or in heavy overcast; and (4) we should consider the
microencapsulation of biological agents to afford them Uv-
protection.

The reader should refer to Dr. Knowles’ and Dr. Lederberg’s write-
ups later in this report.

6. The lethality program should not rely on a small number of
specific CW and BW threat designs. While there are difficult
problems in weaponizing chemical and biological agents for theater
ballistic missiles, a number of countries appear to be capable of
such achievements (or they could acquire the capability from other
countries). Designers of chemical and biological warheads have a
number of practical options for weaponization; the lethality
program needs to consider the full range of such options.

The CW submunition warhead presently being used in the lethality
program is derived from an HE submunition where the HE is replaced
with a chemical agent. This is certainly a possible design option,
but as a chemical submunition it seems grossly overdesigned and it
may not be the optimum way of delivering chemical agents. The
lethality program (and the modeling methodologies which are being
developed) should not rely only on this one very hard design, but
should look at a range of designs so the system developers have
information on how threat hardness trades off with threat
effectiveness. .
Recommendation 6a: Develop a set of reasonably-engineered generic
point designs for chemical and biological warheads (and for HE and
nuclear warheads if they do not exist) using whatever information
exists about foreign designs and considering past U.S. designs as
possible options since a foreign adversary may have gotten them
and since the engineering details are readily available. Consider
newer materials and processes that may be available now to a
foreign adversary. Bracket the uncertainties with these designs.

Recommendation 6b: Investigate simple countermeasures that an
adversary might employ against our interceptor missile systems and
quantify the associated penalties for him. Both operational
changes and material/structural hardening should be considered.

Recommendation 6c: As a part of the lethality assessment (see
next item), assess the relative hardness of all the different
types of threat TMD warheads and the systems implications to our
interceptor programs, taking into account the range of design
options for each type of threat and the associated uncertainties
and possible countermeasures. Use these results to help prioritize
the TMD lethality research in terms of which threats are most
important.

7. ##%(‘The TMD lethality assessment conducted to date is incomplete.
Only a few warhead designs have been analyzed (HE/Chem
Submunition, Unitary Chem, and Unitary HE). No error bars have
been employed on the failure models. The assessment is heavily
systems oriented without a lot of target interaction and target
response physics modeled. A more complete assessment (or
sensitivity study) is needed to help plan the lethality program.

Recommendation 7a: DNA should conduct a comprehensive first-order
lethality assessment against all the TMD targets of interest (with
HE, chemical, biological and nuclear warheads) using best
estimates of the target descriptions and the failure models.
Emphasis should be on the target interaction and target response
physics and what it takes to destroy the targets with high
confidence. The latter needs definition to conduct the study.
Sensitivity studies should be conducted as a part of the
assessment to establish the importance of uncertainties in target
descriptions, target interaction models and target response
models. The impact of various kill criteria, simple target
countermeasures and interceptor system constraints should be
analyzed. The output of this assessment/sensitivity study should
be a prioritized list of threat drivers and lethality issues for
the program to focus on. The assessment should be redone
periodically as more data become available.
The sensitivity study referred to here as part of the assessment
is essentially the same one referred to in item 2 above. It may be
possible to conduct parts of the sensitivity study separately from
the assessment, but many of the same target interaction models and
target response models are needed in both studies.

8. Large-scale, complex experiments, which appear to be a
dominant part of the current program, will not by themselves
provide an adequate basis for good lethality assessments. Such
tests provide relevant demonstrations and also provide an
opportunity to observe interactions between complex phenomenology,
particularly in warheads containing submunitions. However, there
is no way to generalize the results of the necessarily few large-
scale experiments conducted to date and those planned for the
future. This is particularly important since there are a large
number of threat target variations that need to be considered as
well as many interceptor warhead options.

Recommendation 8a: In addition to large-scale tests, conduct
simpler, highly-instrumented component tests (on individual
submunitions and clusters of submunitions) to understand failure
processes and develop failure criteria and failure models.

Recommendation 8b: Place more emphasis on instrumenting
intermediate processes in the large-scale experiments. It is not
sufficient to pick up the pieces and count the surviving
submunitions; we need to understand the processes which produced
failure and the factors which were responsible for survival of
some submunitions.

9. Model development is emphasizing very large and complex
hydrocode solutions that attempt to include all the interceptor-
target warhead interactions. The initial attempts are impressive,
although there are concerns as to whether the failure mechanism of
the individual submunitions is correct and whether the codes have
been adequately validated. Since large-scale testing cannot cover
any but a small fraction of the targets and impact conditions of
interest, hydrocodes are going to be needed to perform sensitivity
studies and to provide additional data to be used with the test
data for developing algorithms for the lethality assessments.

Recommendation 9a: Place more emphasis on analyses of individual
submunition failure and shock propagation through arrays of
submunitions. Develop engineering models and failure criteria
using data from simple experiments (Recommendation 8a) and
validate hydrocodes with data from the simple experiments prior to
analyzing complex targets.
Recommendation 9b: Build on local response models to predict the
response of large, complex targets. Consider using different
models in different zones of the target and analyzing these zones
separately (e.g., direct impact zone versus surrounding
structure). Validate codes using data from instrumentation on
intermediate processes as well as from final damage configuration.

Recommendation 9c: Implement and maintain parallel modeling |
efforts with organizations that have strong engineering mechanics
capabilities as well as the required numerical capabilities.
Conduct frequent working groups with all modelers and basic
experimenters present. For the time being, de-emphasize "shoot
offs" where competing groups predict isolated results of large
comprehensive tests.

Recommendation 9d: Carefully coordinate the modeling and testing
efforts. Modelers should have a major input to the test matrices
and instrumentation plans.

10. The DNA lethality program does not appear to be looking at
advanced (innovative) interceptor kill mechanisms. Rods have shown
promise over chunky fragments; more work on them is needed.
Neutralizing chemical agents has shown promise, but penetration
and mixing are issues that need work.

Recommendation 10a: Invest some resources in investigating
advanced/innovative kill mechanisms. For example, consider two
stage warheads where the first stage is used for target
penetration and breakup and the second stage is used for agent
neutralization. DNA should become the leader for kinetic-energy
lethality technology development.

11. Atmospheric agent dispersal analyses to date have not been
very useful. For example, calculations have been done for ABO
warhead breakup at low altitudes below normal submunition
deployment, and incorrect particle sizes have been used for the
agents. The presenter of this work claimed these cases were run to
test all the physics in his code, but valuable time is being
wasted and some of the earth boundary layer physics being
considered may not even be important to the TMD lethality problem
involving missile-based threats. (Note, it could be important to
low-altitude cruise-missile-based threats.)

Recommendation lla: Focus atmospheric dispersal analyses for
missile threats on high altitude intercepts (prior to submunition
deployment). Consider, on a statistical basis, a range of
atmospheric conditions for geographical areas of interest and
include atmospheric degradation as well as dispersal. Determine
intercept requirements for high confidence of safe concentrations

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on the ground. Consider various target breakup conditions to
determine sensitivity on ground concentrations. Evaluate the
importance of a small number of surviving or partially damaged
submunitions.

Recommendation 11b: Investigate the utility of providing
equivalent risk-dose maps for a range of hypothetical chemical or
ABO attacks, using historical wind data (perhaps by season) for
the specific areas of interest. Also investigate the utility of a
quick look reaction capability to assess the implications of a
specific attack on a given day. DNA should talk to FEMA and others
about a cooperative program to update the civil defense aspects of
a chemical/ABO attack.

Recommendation lle: Draw upon DNA expertise in high-altitude
nuclear cloud modeling (see next item) to strengthen the chemical
and biological dispersal work.

Editorial Note: The Army has recently established a working group
to address the chemical/ABO atmospheric dispersal problem. The
Blue Ribbon Review Consultants were not briefed on the plans and
progress of this group. The recommendations above are based on one
topical presentation and the LTH-5 Semi-Annual Program Review of
March 2 and 3, 1992. The consultants believe that this program
area should be reviewed further in the near future.

12. There is considerable synergism between the TMD lethality
research and other DNA activities. For example, the work on
dispersal of hazardous materials in the atmosphere is similar to
the advection and diffusion of nuclear fallout and it is related
to a companion program recently begun at DNA concerning collateral
effects from targeting chemical and biological storage and
manufacturing facilities. Similarly, the modeling of interceptor
penetration, target breakup, etc. is similar to the dynamic
modeling of structures, RVs, etc. that DNA has worked on for
years. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much of a
connection between previous related nuclear effects work at DNA
and the TMD Lethality Program. Certainly a fresh start with new
people might create new insight, but some connection to past
efforts seems worthwhile. With the schedule and budget constraints
on the TMD Lethality Program, it would be very helpful to transfer
any expertise that exists in other program areas to this one. The
other related DNA projects might as well benefit from a better
understanding of what is being done under the TMD Lethality
Program.

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Recommendation 12a: Invite the relevant CTMs from related DNA
programs to participate in the next program review. Encourage them
to actively participate in the formulation of the TMD Lethality
Program.

13. No work is being done on kill assessment related to TMD. The
requirements for kill assessment are less clear for TMD than for
strategic defense since the time lines are shorter and the
opportunities for second shots may be less. In addition,
submunitions make kill assessment a harder problem for TMD than
for strategic applications.

Recommendation 13a: Investigate architecture studies to establish
whether kill assessment has a role in TMD. If so, investigate
possible approaches for doing kill assessment and begin collecting
relevant data in ground experiments.

14. A conventional type interceptor may not be able to defeat all
possible TMD warheads with high confidence. Killing a large number
of chemical or biological submunitions in one warhead could be
very difficult and may end up involving low confidence.

Recommendation 14a: As a backup option, we agree with DNA's
decision to investigate the potential lethality of a low-yield
nuclear interceptor against TMD warheads, assuming that if all
else fails, a nuclear response to a chemical or biological threat
would be considered acceptable.

15. Any type of lethality program involving biological warheads,
even using just simulants, must be reported now under the
confidence building measures of the 1972 Biological Weapons
Convention. Failure to report this work could complicate
discussions with the Russians over reporting their past biological
programs. Public knowledge of our defensive programs should be a
deterrent to the proliferation of biological weapons.

Recommendation 15a: Coordinate with SDIO over who should report
the SDIO funded biological lethality work. The DNA funded work on
nuclear interceptors should probably be reported separately.

Drs. Huxsoll and Gakenheimer prepared a separate report on treaty

considerations for testing biological defenses that shows the type
of material the U.S. has been reporting in April of each year.

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