Terrorists, Insurgents & WMD? Intent & Capability

[Bill Moore]

Moderator's Note

Bill Moore suggested a new thread on how terrorists/militias/insurgents use and intend to use WMD. Oddly SWC has not debated this (see 1st post for historical links). He suspects we're at the start of a trend that will increase exponentially as tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are further refined.(Ends)


The new information at the bottom is from the 11 OCT round up on the SWJ homepage.

Alsumaria News / Baghdad
confirmed the number of MPs from the province of Diwaniyah , on Monday, killing 300 soldiers using chlorine gas for the first time by the militants..

National Defense Magazine article 'ISIL Determined to Acquire Biological Weapons':http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.o...t.aspx?ID=1632


Syria declares new chemical weapons facilities:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29534926

The UN Security Council has been told that Syria has revealed for the first time the existence of four more chemical weapons facilities.

Of course this sentence shouldn't surprise anyone, hope it was added for comic effect and that the author wasn't actually surprised by this.

Correspondents say the announcement heightens concerns that the Syrian government has not been fully open about its chemical weapons programme.

Chlorine gas by itself is minimally effective as a weapon, which is why I remain suspect of the Iraqi news report that ISIS used it to kill 300 Iraqi soldiers. On the other hand what the use of chlorine gas as a weapon indicates is that they will use more dangerous chemical weapons if they acquire them or make them, and as they demonstrated they're a learning organization so it is possible they'll develop their own form of chemical weapons. Highly improbable that states will be able to deter them from using these weapons. The discussion on bio weapons is premature for now, but I suspect it won't be too long until we see an attempt by IS and other extremist groups to use them. I doubt they'll be restricted by the same logic states used about the concern of containing the impact of bioweapons to a specific geographical region.

In sum, the rules have already changed and we should anticipate improvements in their TTPs. The implications are we may to go back to the future, and place a greater emphasis on protective gear for our soldiers, and dust off the homeland response plans for chemical attacks. For the current state of the art (which won't last, it will progress) the effects will be more psychological than physical, but as we have seen from our reaction to the Boston Marathon Bombing psychological effects can have strategic effect in the media age where we have 24hour news coverage.