Chemical and Biological Defense Program - EMD

The Chemical and Biological Defense Program is focused on research, development, test, and evaluation activities within the System Development & Demonstration (SDD) budget activity. The program aims to provide an integrated, layered capability to enable Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) missions, ranging from combat operations to Department of Defense (DoD) support for domestic incident prevention and response. Specifically, the program resources projects across the Understand, Protect, Mitigate, and Enabling Investments portfolios to develop, build, and test products that verify operational requirements and support production or deployment decisions. The goals include accelerating characterization and situational awareness of emerging biothreats, delivering improved protection from and mitigation of biothreats, and developing new vaccines and therapeutics.

Within the Understand (UN5) project of the Chemical and Biological Defense Program, the specific objectives are to provide the Joint Force with the ability to detect and identify hazards from traditional and emerging chemical and biological threats. This includes improving the timeliness and confidence of information for decision-makers, supporting freedom of maneuver, predicting, locating, identifying, analyzing, and warning of chemical and biological hazards. The Protect (PT5) project aims to prevent the effects of exposure to chemical and biological hazards by developing next-generation prototypes of masks, filters, ensembles to reduce physiological burdens on Warfighters. Additionally, it focuses on developing medical countermeasures for protection against Biological Warfare Agents (BWAs), toxins, non-traditional and emerging chemical threats. The Mitigate (MT5) project aims to preserve combat power by mitigating exposure to CB hazards and restoring combat readiness of critical personnel and platforms. It provides capabilities for Warfighters to rapidly respond to and mitigate adverse effects of CB hazards. Lastly, the Enabling Investments (EN5) project provides fundamental knowledge and technology demonstrations as key portfolio enablers integral to responding to emerging threats.

The program also includes specific projects such as Advanced Emerging Threat Defense (AET DEFENSE), Aerosol & Vapor Chemical Agent Detector (AVCAD), Chemical Biological Wearables - Enhanced Biodefense (CB Wearables - ENBD), Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear Sensor Integration on Robotics Platforms (CSIRP), Compact Vapor Chemical Agent Detector (CVCAD), among others. These projects collaborate with Joint Services, interagency partners to align RDT&E resources against emerging threats such as Non-Traditional Agents (NTAs), synthetic opioids, toxins, advanced biological threats while addressing gaps in current Joint Force capabilities for chemical sensor detection.