HASC Takes Decisive Action To Bolster America’s Preparedness For Anthrax Bioweapons

ARLINGTON, VA - The American Biodefense Action Coalition (ABAC), a coalition of Americans concerned about the threat of biological warfare, today commended the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee’s recent decisive action to advance Anthrax preparedness language in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), specifically noting the Protecting Military Personnel from Biological Weapons report. The full bill has now reported favorably out of Committee to the full U.S. House of Representatives. The Anthrax preparedness report language, which recognizes Anthrax as the leading biological threat to the United States, passed via voice vote.

The report demonstrates Congress’ determination to ensuring that the U.S. Government will continue to replenish Anthrax antitoxin stockpiles, consistent with requirement levels, via a whole-of-government approach leveraging interagency coordination. Future stockpile procurement of anthrax antitoxin is currently scheduled to be eliminated from the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), starting in FY26 and extending into FY27, per the most recent Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasure Enterprise (PHEMCE) Multi Year Budget. The report language also requires the proposal of a modernized 10-year strategy to ensure stable, secure, and sustainable stockpiling of Anthrax countermeasures, developed by the Assistant Secretary of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense in coordination with interagency partners, such as the SNS and other PHEMCE agencies. It also requires a briefing on how the U.S. Government will leverage public-private partnerships with manufacturers to ensure sustainment of the Anthrax countermeasure industrial base across this interagency framework.

While the NDAA language is inherit to the Department of Defense (DoD), the DoD and SNS collaborate through the PHEMCE to ensure a whole-of-government, interagency approach to preparedness for both the warfighter and civilians. 

The language was in part necessitated as the DoD has generally relied on the SNS to ensure that countermeasures like Anthrax antitoxins may be made available to support warfighters, dependents, and civilians on base. Given this reliance, the DoD does not currently forward-deploy Anthrax antitoxins, yet practically it would be highly infeasible for the SNS to provide such countermeasures to the DoD in an emergent scenario. Not only is the SNS currently critically low in meeting their civilian requirement as it stands, the SNS requirement is also not intended to support a DoD requirement. Furthermore, despite the very limited SNS inventory as it stands, by the time antitoxins arrive overseas to support personnel on bases such as in South Korea or Japan, the therapeutic window for treatment may have passed. This would leave the warfighter, civilians, and their dependents on base without any lifesaving antitoxins; meanwhile, should those antitoxins be shipped overseas with few remaining quantities available domestically, the civilian stockpile would practically be depleted. Finally, the pending elimination of future antitoxin procurement in the SNS, as indicated by the PHEMCE budget, greatly exacerbates this risk.

Wartime scenarios involving Anthrax risk are highly concerning: in one such example, President Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy indicated significant North Korean efforts to deploy Anthrax in warheads that could reach U.S. military installations in Japan or South Korea. Meanwhile, there are also grave concerns about a simultaneous attack domestically: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) also specifically warns about Pyongyang’s high interest in launching clandestine biological weapon attacks domestically against the United States. In this instance, should antitoxins be shipped rapidly overseas to treat U.S. military patients and their families on these bases, these quantities may be insufficient, and there would be few - if any - remaining antitoxins available in the U.S. to meet the civilian requirement, expanding the vulnerability for domestic, clandestine attacks also originating from North Korea. This example alone greatly bolsters the case for additional efforts to continue advancing the SNS’ stockpile of Anthrax countermeasures, while also driving the DoD to establish their own forward-deployment of antitoxin countermeasures - which the NDAA report language accomplishes.

This decisive Congressional action from the House Armed Services Committee follows the vast support for H.R. 2707, the Protecting American Families & Servicemembers From Anthrax Act. H.R. 2707 has received bipartisan support from 15 Members of Congress - including Members of the House Armed Services Committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Committee on Homeland Security. These committees all maintain jurisdiction over Anthrax preparedness issues through their respective oversight of member agencies in the PHEMCE.

ABAC is pleased that this report language, which closely mirrors H.R. 2707, presents an opportunity for the DoD, SNS, and other agencies to collaborate to modernize their Anthrax preparedness strategy, reverse the planned zeroing out of Anthrax antitoxins, enhance overall stockpile levels to meet both warfighter and civilians requirements, and bolster interagency coordination in a manner that ensures that all Americans are protected against Anthrax threats.

A weaponized Anthrax attack could kill millions of Americans, destroy military readiness, and obliterate our economy. Given this tremendous national security risk, ABAC looks forward to continuing to engage with policymakers until the SNS and DoD’s Anthrax preparedness vulnerabilities are alleviated.