“When in Doubt, Call USAMRIID:” U.S. Army North Exercise Tests Biological Threat Response

FORT DETRICK, Md. – Operations in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear contested environments pose unique challenges for field commanders. How can they protect their Warfighters from biological threats without impeding their ability to fight and win on the battlefield? The mission of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is to assist field commanders in achieving that balance by shortening decision cycles, providing tools for force health protection, and training Warfighters in critical biological defense skills – a message that USAMRIID was able to drive home during a recent first-of-its-kind tabletop exercise on responding to biological incidents.

The modern biodefense landscape is becoming increasingly complex and dynamic. The coronavirus pandemic demonstrated how novel infectious diseases can pose an urgent threat. Experts are concerned that potential adversaries will soon be able to combine machine learning algorithms with emerging biotechnologies to create biological weapons more easily. Threats like these, USAMRIID believes, are likely to appear initially to military commanders as medical planning and response problems.

“A biological incident is not likely to appear at the end of the mission,” explains Lt. Col. Brandon Pybus, the chief of USAMRIID’s Diagnostic Systems Division. “It may well be there from the start. What USAMRIID does is buy time for operational decision making by the maneuver commanders.”

Pybus recently delivered his message to an audience representing Army Service Component Commands, Combat Support Agencies, and other DOD and federal partners as part of a three-day tabletop exercise at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph that took place Dec. 10-12, 2024. The objective of the exercise – the Army’s first at the ASCC level – was to evaluate operational and doctrinal gaps in how forces identify and respond to biological incidents, and to foster dialogue among participants to improve biological threat preparation and prevention, early warning, response, and mitigation.

U.S. Army North hosted the event in response to recommendations in both the 2022 National Defense Strategy and the 2023 Biodefense Posture Review that the Joint Force begin exercising biological incident scenarios. The U.S. Army Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Agency sponsored the exercise as part of its efforts to implement the Army Biodefense Strategy.

“USAMRIID is on a mission to educate our partners in the operational force about our capabilities,” says Pybus. “We are the birthplace of biodefense. We operate the nation’s largest biosafety level-3 and -4 containment laboratories, and the DOD’s only BSL-4 facility. We have definitive reachback capability for forward deployed forces. But we often find that people on the operational side are not aware of the resources and capabilities that we can bring to bear for them. So, one of the things that we try to bring home for them during exercises like this is: When in doubt, call USAMRIID.”

Pybus explains that USAMRIID’s foundational science divisions – diagnostic systems, virology, molecular biology, and bacteriology – are the “engine” for delivering its medical defense capabilities to the Joint Force. In addition, USAMRIID has experts in cross-cutting capabilities including veterinary medicine, pathology, regulated research, clinical research, and training and education who can assist deployed forces with specific needs. And thanks to its partnerships with the DOD’s Global Emerging Infections Surveillance program, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Biological Threat Reduction Program, and other direct reporting units within the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, USAMRIID has a global presence in every combatant command.

“USAMRIID’s participation in the USARNORTH bioincident tabletop exercise was invaluable for helping understand and learn about an Army asset that we can reach out to for biological expertise,” says Maj. Jason Canady, ARNORTH’s nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction advisor. “In the past, ARNORTH has leaned on our relationship with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and DTRA. However, both of those agencies have customers beyond just the Army. USAMRIID provides a reachback and expertise capability we can leverage from an Army perspective and not be in competition for that support across the Joint Force. We hope moving forward to start utilizing USAMRIID as a first option for expertise before branching out further outside of the Army, and USARNORTH looks forward to growing our relationship with USAMRIID.”

In addition to educating commanders about USAMRIID’s capabilities, Pybus also encouraged exercise participants to think outside of the box when it comes to identifying potential biological threats.

“What will do the most damage to us are the things we haven’t anticipated,” says Pybus.

With that in mind, USAMRIID recently stood up the Operational Response Cell, which is tasked with going out to the combatant commands to learn firsthand about biodefense threats they are seeing in the field, and to use that information to better tailor USAMRIID’s responses to emerging threats on a regional basis.

During the exercise, representatives from GEIS and the 1st Global Field Medical Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground discussed their involvement in USAMRIID’s efforts to implement its new Diagnostic Readiness Adaptive Global Operational Network and Mobile Embedded Diagnostic Capability, or DRAGON MEDIC. DRAGON MEDIC is an innovative paradigm for fielding and improving portable rapid diagnostic tools capable of identifying biological threats more quickly and efficiently than current methods. Its first iteration uses commercial off-the-shelf targeted sequencing technology to test for suspected pathogens in real-time at the point of exposure, which allows medics to respond more quickly to biological threats than having to wait for test results to come back from a lab.

USAMRIID recently received the prestigious Maj. Gen. Harold J. “Harry” Greene Innovation Award in Acquisition Writing from Army Futures Command for its innovative approach to getting DRAGON MEDIC technology into the hands of operators like GEIS and 1st GFML so it can be used in field settings. This real-world experience helps the operators iterate and stress-test equipment and procedures that will lead to more agile responses to novel and emerging infectious disease threats in the future.

Drawing on its experience with this first tabletop exercise, USAMRIID has offered to continue to provide assistance as USANCA develops the next set of biological incident scenarios. USAMRIID is also in discussion with USARNORTH to develop relevant biodefense-focused training scenarios for cold-weather environments, such as at upcoming Arctic Edge exercises.

“There’s always an eye-opening moment when USAMRIID explains to operational units what we do and what we can do for them,” says Pybus. “When you open their eyes to that, there’s an ‘aha’ moment when they see the force multiplier potential.”