Posted: March 12th, 2023

HLSC 720-DISCUSSION 7-REPLY 1

The thread must be a minimum of 200-400 words. MINIMUM OF TWO SOURCES BESIDES THE TEXTBOOK. Must cite at least 2 sources in addition to the Bible.

TEXTBOOK: Bennett, B. T. (2018). Understanding, assessing, and responding to terrorism: Protecting critical infrastructure and personnel (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN: 9781119237785.

**RICHARD***

WMD and Risk Analysis

      Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are for the terrorist an equalizer to economic and technological advantages a strong nation may have over them. These WMDs can be crudely made or even military-grade (Bennett, 2018). WMDs have been employed in the last fifty years by organizations. For the last twenty-plus years we have watched from afar as groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the horn of Africa have employed varying types of explosive devices against formidable enemies. The majority of casualties suffered by the United States in the war on Terror are from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The use of chemical weapons can be traced to the first World War. On both sides of the war, the soldiers were dug into trench warfare as a sort of stalemate was taking place. In Ypres, Belgium the Germans sought to change the tide of the war. The allied soldiers huddle in their positions as they were used to doing. Germany launched an artillery barrage, and they waited it out.  Then a pause in the attack and the forces started to peer over the trench to see a yellow and green cloud floating toward them (Kennedy, 2015). Germany had released chlorine gas from cylinders and changed warfare forever.

            Moving forward to 1984 this is when biological terror was introduced to the United States. This occurred in a small town in Oregon as members of the Rajneeshee cult attempted to influence the results of the local political landscape by taking over an unincorporated town. They used spray bottles to spread salmonella over salad bars in the area resulting in over 700 residents getting sick (Imperiale, 2007).  We need to look no further than September 2001 when letters with Anthrax spores in them were mailed to many leaders in the United States (Ellis, 2014). The results were the deaths of five and the infection of at least 17 people.

            A recent attack in Pennsylvania highlights the need for a risk assessment including WMD. In June 2019 a man who was unhappy with his girlfriend took his DJI Phantom 3 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) and made a mechanism for it to drop items. The item he used for this was an explosive about the size of a 40 MM round (Musumeci, 2019). The round fell and exploded in the driveway of her home.  Home security cameras in the area filmed the explosion and were able to highlight the shrapnel it produced.  This emerging threat is of vital importance to protecting against attacks.  It will require those charged with critical infrastructure to assess and ultimately make the decisions required to protect against possible attacks utilizing low slow and small UAS to conduct attacks. These vehicles can be fitted with any of the agents identified as CBRNE (Bennett, 2018). The protection of the sites will include mitigation against flights for that delivery and training the operators of the facility to react to a possible attack utilizing them.

Worldview

  While the Lord did not intend for us to fight with weapons, we must prepare against them to protect all that we hold as important to us (King James Version, 2020, 2 Corinthians 10:4)

-Rich LaMonica          

References:

Bennett. (2018). Understanding, assessing and responding to terrorism protecting critical infrastructure and personnel (Bennett, Ed.; Second edition.). John Wiley & Sons.

Ellis, R. (2014). Creating a secure network: The 2001 anthrax attacks and the transformation of postal security. The Sociological Review (Keele), 62(S1), 161-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12128

Imperiale, M. J. (2007). Gene therapy and biosecurity. Molecular Therapy, 15(4), 648-649. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mt.6300136

Kennedy, E. L. (2015). Dusk at Ypres and the dawn of modern chemical warfare. Army (Washington. 1956), 65(6), 53

King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/. originally published 1611

Musumeci, N. (2019, September 19). Pennsylvania man allegedly used a drone to drop explosives on ex-girlfriend’s home. New York Post. Retrieved February 23, 2023, from https://nypost.com/2019/09/19/pennsylvania-man-allegedly-used-drone-to-drop-explosives-on-ex-girlfriends-home/