Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Pentagon Retools Bio-Effort After $1 Billion Flop | Danger Room | Wired.com

Pentagon Retools Bio-Effort After $1 Billion Flop | Danger Room | Wired.com: "It was supposed to come up with antidotes for pathogens that terrorists might use for a mass-casualty bio-attack. But after spending over $1 billion during the last five years, the Pentagon’s Transformational Medical Technology initiative can barely develop drugs ready for a clinical trial. That’s why the officials tasked with running it are setting their research-subsidy targets much lower.

In a shift, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s science and technology chief tells the Boston Globe that the bio-initiative will now invest money on early detection of new pathogens. That puts about another $1 billion worth of Pentagon cash closer to where science is, rather than throwing money at crash programs for undeveloped antidotes. Ultimately, the Pentagon wants to develop multi-pronged vaccines that can resist a variety of biological agents — what it calls “One Drug, Many Bugs.” But that’s a long way off: step one is understanding how those sicknesses develop.

The Globe reports that the program has hit one snag after another. Out of nearly 50 research programs, only two (unspecified) efforts to neutralize pathogens like Ebola and Marburg have shown promise, and they’re not ready for clinical trial.
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NATO Missile Defense for Europe





NATO has agreed to provide ballistic missile defense or BMD for all of Europe. This NATO BMD will protect NATO (European and American) military forces in Europe. It will also – for the very first time – protect the civilian population throughout Europe from ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction launched from the Middle East.
Much of this NATO missile defense for Europe – known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach – will actually be provided by the United States armed forces. This will include seaborne AEGIS missile defense on board US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, as well as land based radars and interceptor missiles.
This e-book describes how NATO missile defense for Europe will be organized and implemented.