[GartzenDeHaes]

Biological weapons are not used by the US due to practicality, not morality.

1. It's difficult to manufacture biological agents in large quantities.

2. It's hard to store biological agents for long periods of time, since living things tend to die.

3. It's hard to disperse biological agents over a large area. Spray tanks require flying at low altitude at slow speeds, or multiple deployments at high speeds. Munitions with bursters are problematic because the explosive burster tends to destroy much of the biological agent that you're trying to spread.

4. It's easy to protect troops in the field from biological agents and all major countries maintain and exercise the capability to do so.

5. Biological agents are slow acting and unreliable in their effect.

Long after the Korean War, the Soviet microtoxin program overcame many of these problems. The Americans took a different approach and focused on improving nerve agents, with the most recent development (that I know of) being a multi-part agent called GB-2.

[MichaelZuo]

If the evidence presented in this article are true, then it's likely because of the 'test trial' usages in the Korean War that it was confirmed to be impractical.

Plus, considering there's substantial evidence that McArthur was close to nuking Manchuria, it seems likely he would have been willing to try something slightly less escalatory and much easier to hide and plausibly deny.

[HWR_14]

Biological agents are not used by the US because it went all in on nukes. Frankly, the US having an official policy of "biological attacks will be met by nukes" is better than having a bioweapon program as deterrence.

[rvba]

GB is sarin. What is that GB-2?

Cannot find much information about anything like that via google.

[GartzenDeHaes]

https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/831901-overview

"Known binary agents include the following: GB binary (sarin, GB2): DF is located in 1 canister, while OPA is in a second canister. The isopropyl amine binds to the hydrogen fluoride generated during the chemical reaction. After deployment of the weapon, the 2 canisters rupture and the chemical mixture produces GB."

[rvba]

Binary of sarin is latest they got? Doesnt sound very "new".

[GartzenDeHaes]

The US destroyed it's chemical weapons stockpile in the 1990's and 2000's. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there's no use case for chemical weapons and precision weapons are more profitable.

[hulitu]

> The US destroyed it's chemical weapons stockpile in the 1990's and 2000's.

Maybe officially.

[coolhand2120]

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

What would you describe this as? This was proposed to the US military. Then it was executed by the Chinese military.

[WeylandYutani]

Nuclear weapons got better. You can deliver a hydrogen bomb anywhere on the planet via ICBM so why muck around with germs?

[kornhole]

A few engineered viruses can go a long way cheaply. Problem is you cannot control the spread. You need to have a vaccine ready for the blowback.

[JPLeRouzic]

> "Problem is you cannot control the spread."

Some historians say that the English defeated Napoleon at Waterloo because many French soldiers (including Napoleon) had diarrhea.

An important difference between French and English soldiers was that the former boiled water for tea, while the French preferred wine.

https://www.historynet.com/napoleonic-wars-soldiers/

[WeylandYutani]

Money has never been a consideration for the Pentagon since 1941.

[chii]

not to mention a virus could evolve to evade the vaccine too.

[dukeofdoom]

Do we really know what the current capabilities are. It would be top secret. It's been decades of research. I would expect many of these issues have been worked around.

I used to think AI was fictional pipe dream. Yet it came to be.

> 1. It's difficult to manufacture biological agents in large quantities.

Yet the covid vaccine was manufactured in huge quantities in short time.

> 2. It's hard to store biological agents for long periods of time, since living things tend to die.

The covid vaccine was kept cold storage of -60, and it was good for 18 months.

>3. It's hard to disperse biological agents over a large area.

This would not be an issue for a respiratory virus, that targets a specific ethnic group.

> 4. It's easy to protect troops in the field from biological agents and all major countries maintain and exercise the capability to do so.

Yet almost everyone got infected by covid.

> 5. Biological agents are slow acting and unreliable in their effect.

Covid was fast acting. Yet not that deadly. So i suppose if it was more deadly this too would fall.

[sterlind]

targeting a specific ethnic group would be extremely challenging. afaik, ethnicity is actually responsible for surprisingly little genetic variation. maybe you could e.g. come up with a spike protein that's 25% better at binding an ACE2 receptor variant that 80% of ethnic group X has vs. only 30% of ethnic group Y, but that's not going to make Y immune.

[rurban]

We do have the results of the South African chemical and biological weapons program in clear: https://css.ethz.ch/en/services/digital-library/articles/art... And they certainly did not come out with such lists out of the blue.

[morkalork]

The problem with #3 is that viruses will happily evolve and hop species. Covid for example spread to farmed mink, then to wild populations. Even random zoo animals were catching it.

[__MatrixMan__]

Pretty much none of these limitations apply if you can tune the agent to be contagious and harmless (except for the target).

[t-writescode]

Nothing like a FOXDIE scenario :D

(Metal Gear superweapon that eventually begins to decay and loses its specific-person targeting ability to the point where Snake needs to die to save the rest of the world)