Defense Threat Reduction Agency

History

After the end of the Cold War, DTRA and its predecessor agencies have implemented the DoD aspects of several treaties that assist former Eastern Bloc countries in the destruction of Soviet era nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons sites (such as missile silos and plutonium production facilities) in an attempt to avert potential weapons proliferation in the post-Soviet era as part of the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. DTRA is responsible for US reporting under the New START Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

DTRA is also responsible for reducing the threat of conventional war, especially in Europe, by participating in various arms control treaties to which the United States is a party, such as the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies, as well as the Vienna Document and Global Exchange of Military Information under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. the Transparency in Armaments activity of the United Nations, and the Wassenaar Arrangement.

In 2002, DTRA published a detailed history of its predecessor agencies, Defense’s Nuclear Agency, 1947–1997, which is in the public domain. The first paragraph of the preface makes the following brief statement about the agencies which led up to the formation of DTRA.

Defense's Nuclear Agency, 1947–1997, traces the development of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), and its descendant government organizations, from its original founding in 1947 to 1997. After the disestablishment of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) in 1947, AFSWP was formed to provide military training in nuclear weapons’ operations. Over the years, its sequential descendant organizations have been the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) from 1959 to 1971, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) from 1971 to 1996, and the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, DSWA, the On-Site Inspection Agency, the Defense Technology Security Administration, and selected elements of the Office of Secretary of Defense were combined to form the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

On January 26, 2006, the director of DTRA was given the extra responsibility of the director of the USSTRATCOM Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, a subordinate component to the U.S. Strategic Command.

DTRA has the responsibility to manage and integrate the Department of Defense chemical and biological defense science and technology programs. In accordance with the Recommendation 174 (h) of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission, part of the Chemical Biological Defense Research component of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was re-located to Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 2011. This represented a move of about ten percent of the staff of the Chemical Biological Defense Research component of DTRA to Aberdeen Proving Ground; the rest of the staff remain at Fort Belvoir.

Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF) fiasco In 1996, under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Initiative the US Congress established the Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF), intended to be a self-sustaining fund, creating profitable joint ventures with Russian firms agreeing to convert from production of weaponry to other businesses. DEF's supervising agency was DTRA.

In July 1999, DEF employee, Matthew Maly, a US citizen, sent a confidential letter of concern to the US Department of State claiming that up to $20M may have been mismanaged or stolen from DEF by its American top management.

An internal audit was conducted by a law firm appointed by the US Department of State. The law firm took 360 pages of evidence Maly had, and this evidence disappeared. Then Maly forced the Pentagon to conduct two more audits, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service Investigation. The allegations originally presented by Maly were never disproved.

An August, 2000 DoD audit revealed that the fund's original $67 million was then worth around $31 million, that mismanagement was widespread, and that no plan for sustainability had been developed or implemented. DEF was eventually closed, with its entire $67M grant apparently lost.

DEF originally claimed to have employed 3,370 former Soviet WMD scientists. Maly disputed this figure, claiming that no more than 200 of them could have been employed. After an article in Defense Week, the figure was reduced to 1,250, but Maly kept the pressure on, until the figure was reduced to "there has been a clerical error".

It is reasonable to assume that some Russian nuclear and missile scientists that DEF was supposed to have peacefully employed went to North Korea and Iran thereby endangering the security of the United States and the world.

Another aspect of DEF was that DEF was actually trying to strengthen Russian military capabilities with the US taxpayers money. For example, DEF was trying to build in Russia the most advanced microchip plant in the world (a $200M project).

Joint Meritorious Unit Award

DTRA and its legacy agencies have been awarded the Joint Meritorious Unit Award (JMUA) since the JMUA was implemented in 1982 (and made retroactive to 1979):

Defense Nuclear Agency

On-Site Inspection Agency

Defense Special Weapons Agency

Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Ebola

DTRA has spent approximately $300 million on scientific R&D efforts since 2003 developing vaccines and therapeutic treatments against viral hemorrhagic fever, including Ebola. Starting in 2007, DTRA partnered with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to fund research on the drug now called ZMapp, which has since been used on several patients.

DTRA also funded and managed the research on the EZ1 assay used to detect and diagnose the presence of the Ebola Zaire virus in humans. EZ1 was given Emergency Use Authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in August 2014. DTRA first developed EZ1 as part of a 2011 "bio-preparedness initiative" for the United States Department of Defense to prepare for a possible Ebola outbreak. EZ1 was used to identify infected patients in West Africa.

DTRA was the program manager for designing, testing, contracting, and production of the Transport Isolation System (TIS), a sealed, self-contained patient containment system that can be loaded into United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster and C-130 Hercules cargo planes for aeromedical evacuation. The TIS was designed to deal with any U.S. troops exposed to or infected with Ebola while serving in Operation United Assistance, but it is for transporting anyone exposed to or infected with any highly contagious disease. It can hold eight patients laying down, 12 sitting, or a combination of the two. DTRA worked with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) and United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) on the TIS; St. Louis-based Production Products was awarded a sole-source contract to produce 25 TIS units.

DTRA's Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program awarded a $4 million contract to MRIGlobal to "configure, equip, deploy and staff two quick response mobile laboratory systems (MLS) to support the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa." The labs were deployed to Sierra Leone.

Syria's chemical weapons

DTRA was one of the key United States Department of Defense agencies that developed the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS) used to destroy Syria's chemical weapons aboard the U.S.-flagged container ship MV Cape Ray in the summer of 2014 after Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons stockpile under international pressure and in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2118. DTRA partnered with the United States Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) to develop the FDHS and then modify it for ship-borne operations after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to turn over his country’s poison gas arsenal and chemical weapon production equipment to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) but no country volunteered to host the destruction process.

Two FDHS units destroyed more than 600 tons of Sarin and mustard agents, completing the task several weeks ahead of schedule. The remaining materials were then taken to Finland and Germany for final disposal. DTRA was awarded its third Joint Meritorious Unit Award for successfully destroying Syria's declared chemical weapons.

Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)

DTRA funded, managed, and tested the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb until February 2010 when the program was turned over to the United States Air Force. DTRA developed the MOP to fulfill a long-standing Air Force requirement for a weapon that could destroy hard and deeply buried targets. The MOP is a 30,000 pound, 20.5 foot long bomb dropped from B-52 and B-2 bombers at high altitude that can reportedly penetrate 200 feet of reinforced concrete. The MOP contains a 5,300 pound explosive charge, more than 10 times the explosive power of its predecessor, the BLU-109 ‘bunker buster.’

Project MAXIMUS

In 2003, a DTRA task force was identifying, collecting and securing radiological material in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, including almost two tons of low enriched uranium (LEU), several hundred tons of yellowcake (a type of uranium powder), and other radioactive sources. Code-named Project MAXIMUS, DTRA and the United States Department of Energy moved 1.77 metric tons of LEU and approximately 1,000 highly radioactive sources out of Iraq by the summer of 2004. DTRA task force members also secured the yellowcake in a bunker in Tuwaitha, Iraq, which was turned over to the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology; the remaining 550 tons of yellowcake were sold in 2008 to Cameco, a uranium producer in Canada.