Norfolk Status: Going Home Time Frame

[RN7]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Just to throw a wrench in, the Russians were believed to have armed some of their ICBM warheads with biological warfare warheads.

The Soviets had a very active and extensive biological warfare programme.

According to Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies the Soviets developed smallpox biological weapons that were intended for use against American cities, with the aim of killing the survivors in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange. U.S. intelligence officials said they were unaware of the plan until Soviet scientist Kanatjan Alibek defected in 1992, and is now the executive director of George Mason University’s Center for Biodefense in Virginia. But the U.S. had suspicions that one Soviet missile system had been modified to carry biological weapons; The SS-11 missiles had an oddly shaped warhead, and it was suspected it might be for biological weapons;

Tucker states that the SS-11, SS-13, SS-17 and SS-18 ICBM's were equipped with special biological weapon warheads over a 20-year-period. He also states that many of the missiles were based in silos near the Arctic Circle on a launch-ready status. The cold temperatures in the far north kept the smallpox agent viable for long periods. Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which maintains a historical database of Soviet missile deployments, said that while there were no Soviet missile fields within 500 miles of the Arctic Circle. Four fields of SS-11, SS-13 and SS-17 missiles were located at northern latitudes of the Soviet Union during the period Alibek says the smallpox warheads were deployed. Those fields no longer exist as of 2001.

Tucker also states that Soviet engineers later developed special refrigerated warheads for the more modern SS-18, to enable the biological payload to survive the intense heat of re-entry through the atmosphere. A senior U.S. intelligence official at the time confirmed that U.S. spy satellites had detected a variant of the SS-11 missile warhead that had raised suspicions about biological weapons.

Alibek said the initial targets were New York, Seattle and Chicago, and that Boston was added to the list later. And American cities were not the only target. After 1968 Chinese cities also were placed on the target list. Alibek said he saw Gorbachev's signature on a Soviet Politburo document authorizing the production of smallpox for use in a war against the United States.

Tucker also states that the Soviet Union may have been responsible for distributing samples of the smallpox virus to other countries, including Iraq and North Korea, following the World Health Organization's eradication of the disease in the late 1970's. Tucker cites a U.S. National Security Council document as listing other possible recipients as China, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Yugoslavia.

However a lot of this is speculation. I would be certain that the Soviets did think about developing biological warheads for missiles and maybe even tinkered with a prototype or two. But I don't think there is any real evidence that the Soviet ever really deployed biological warheads on ICBM's.