I joined the British military in the early 1990s in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. Much of my training was in Cold War doctrine as we had yet to develop anything new or more relevant to replace it. A key part of my training was how to protect myself and my equipment’s ability to Survive To Operate (STO) under Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) conditions. In today’s military, the acronym has slightly changed to reflect the threat from both nuclear explosions and the dispersion or use of highly dangerous nuclear materials; it is now CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear). Every year we would put on our Protection Suits, practice rapidly ‘masking up’ to prevent ingesting toxic gasses and then undergo the ritual respirator canister changing drills in a room full of CS gas (and often your laughing mates if, with your eyes closed, you cross threaded or dropped your canister during the changing drill and got a face and lungful of the stuff…). We were taught to recognise the symptoms of and mitigate the effects of a Biological attack. We knew how to respond in the event of a nuclear flash; to hit the ground and wait for both pressure waves to pass before moving to shelter. We thought the training was a hilarious Cold War relic, imposed upon us by a system that couldn’t accept the world had changed and didn’t know what direction to strike off in.
We are now hunting in the world in 2020, fearlessly because of the concern of baby boomers’ home shelters, but our updated offices, gardens and living rooms. The specter of an invisible disease lurks all over the world; a disease that, although a relatively non-fatal pathogen compared to Ebola, however, has brought a shocking end to giant swathes of “normal life.” The single global power is also now much more confused; A reborn and confident Russian sword resonates on the world stage, and its pilots seem like an almost reckless technique for intercepting and observing U.S. patrol aircraft. Communism would possibly be dead, however, an even more virulent creed, that of nationalism, is cowardly and the peoples of Ukraine, the Baltic states, Turkey, Syria and Lithrougha are well aware of this. China, Covid-19’s “patient zero,” is increasingly announcing its economic, military and social power. The global turns out to be another turning point. But surely, isn’t a retreat to the dark days of the Cold War feasible?
We might be wrong. Astonishing as it may seem, despite the Cold War being consigned to history, the UK has been impacted by three out of four elements of the CBRN acronym in the past 20 years.
In 2006, a Russian asylum holder and former KGB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, died in London after a short and painful illness. Foul Play was suspected, and it was later proved via blood test and post-mortem examination that his death was as a result of radioactive poisoning – specifically Polonium 210 (Po-210). How the poison came to be in Litvinenko’s system remains a matter for debate, with accusation and denials flowing between the UK and Russian governments. According to the UK, Litvinenko was poisoned by a massively over-lethal dose of Po-210 being administered to a cup of tea he was drinking whilst meeting with two other Russians, now suspected of being his poisoners. Whilst the death of an individual was tragic, of greater concern to the UK was the brazen way that his supposed killers deployed a lethal radiological substance in a highly public place. Worse, as government scientists traced the movements of the suspects, they found a trail of contamination in bars, restaurants, hotel rooms and other places they’d been – suggesting that they’d contaminated themselves with sloppy handling of a highly toxic substance; a trail which required extensive and expensive decontamination.
Surely, such a situation couldn’t occur again…could it?
In March 2018 another Russian defector, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found slumped unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury by passing off-duty medical personnel. Having been rushed to hospital, suspicions over their symptoms began to be raised, no doubt cognisant of the nearby location of the UK’s prime CBRN research centre at Porton Down. Tests subsequently proved that both had been exposed to a Nerve Agent, identified by the UK Government as A-234 Novichok. Highly toxic, it was believed that it had been delivered to the door handle of the Skripal home via an aerosol spray. An extensive decontamination effort was required in the centre of Salisbury, including the restaurant they’d eaten that night and their home address, causing weeks of disruption. Tragically, a few weeks later, a Salisbury local, Dawn Sturgess, died after finding an aerosol abandoned in a public refuse bin and, assuming it was perfume, unwittingly sprayed herself with a lethal dose of the agent.
The pattern was similar to the Litvinenko incident; the use of a highly lethal toxin in a very public setting, with seemingly no regard to safe handling or disposal. Again, claim and counter claim flew between governments. But it seemed that the Radiological and Chemical ‘Genies’ were out of the bottle, the latter amplified by the alleged Syrian use of nerve gas on its rebellious population and Saddam Hussein’s gassing of his Kurdish minorities.
Although Covid-19 appears not to be a deliberate attack, the response is as per the Cold War Biological attack response playbook. Keep potential cross-contamination to a minimum by maintaining distance and scrupulous washing / decontamination. If possible, vaccinate widely and trace the spread of the agent through the population.
What piques me as someone who saw the end of the Cold War mindset is how thinking has changed between 1990 and 2020. At the height of the Cold War, NATO nations built and maintained stockpiles of CBRN and medical equipment. The former included Individual Protective Equipment (IPE) consisting of over-suits/respirators and Collective Protection (ColPro) buildings which were inflatable ‘tent cities’ where personnel would move through a series of airlocks and chambers, decontaminating as they went, to a ‘Toxic Free Area’ where burdensome CBRN IPE could be dispensed with for working, eating and sleeping. Entire military hospitals were pre-packed a pre-positioned in the UK and other countries to be ready for mass battlefield casualties in the event of war breaking out in Europe.
We trained. We stockpiled. We waited. We were prepared.
That world has gone. The ‘Peace Dividend’ of the early 1990s, eagerly taken by most Western democracies, saw defence spending as a percentage of GDP slashed. In the UK, for example, during the latter stages of the Cold War, Defence was between 3.5-4% of GDP – now we have to ‘fudge’ the figures to even make the NATO mandated minimum of 2%. Hitting 2% makes the UK a bigger spender than most others though; Germany and Canada barely break the 1% mark. Coincident with this reduction in GDP has been a fundamental change in how logistics and supply chains are managed. The days of stockpiling have been replaced by leaner ‘just in time’ logistics. In a steady state, ‘just in time’ is highly efficient. It removes the need for government and industry to build and maintain large warehouses; it also prevents a large element of stock wastage as products do not pass shelf-life dates nor are rendered obsolete whilst in store. Whilst such a logistical model works well for a normal ‘pulse’, it can be exposed very quickly by a crisis. Since the wave of Covid-19 infections burst out of China, the world has realised that the sudden, enormous, demand for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has resulted in a global shortage. ‘Just in Time’ has proved ‘Just too Late’ in many cases, and the finely tuned and optimised industrial base has risked stalling as it attempts to reconfigure itself rapidly to a near war-footing to produce and distribute products needed to contain, and ultimately fight, the Coronavirus.
As I write this, we seem, in the UK at least, to be on the down slope of the first wave of the infection. We have to expect a second wave as the most onerous restrictions on personal liberties and the economy are relaxed. We have bought some time; time to adapt our procedures, reprioritise some of our industrial capacity and distribution supply chains and to educate our people. We’ve even done some stockpiling – on both a personal and national level.
Have we learnt some lessons, however?
As the world’s population continues to grow, our need for uncooked area and fabrics is increasing. Push human contact with the animal kingdom deeper into jungles, rainforests and deserts. Inevitably, there will be other mutations in coronavirus, SARS and Ebola that await us, as well as pathogens that we have not yet encountered. In the rush to return to “business as usual,” we deserve to take a break and, as a “global village,” think about what we can do next time. I would say that a small image reflected in a harsh bloodless war war could be appropriate.
I spent 23 years in the RAF as a helicopter pilot, flying CH47 Chinook, others, in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Iraq and Afghanistan.
I spent 23 years in the RAF as a helicopter pilot, flying ch47 Chinook, among others, in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Iraq and Afghanistan, recording approximately 1000 hours of combat during operational deployments. I specialized in education and tactical development, electronic warfare, operational testing and evaluation and acquisition; the latter as capacity manager for the Chinook, guilty of buying new systems to help my friends and colleagues stay safe on the front line. After leaving the armed forces, I established my own consulting firm, Ascalon (named after the mythical sword of St. George), where I give independent recommendations to withdraw NATO and governments, as well as systems engineering assistance for primary defense projects. History has been my passion, and I review to assess the demanding situations of aviation and defense in the ancient context. When I’m not writing for Forbes, I’m contributing to the writing of the Heli-Ops magazine relatives circle.