Drones and Chemical Plants

Recent headlines for the Ukraine War highlight a new dimension in the use of drones as a weapon. A report from UPI.com notes: “Ukraine officials say forces struck Russian chemical plant overnight”. This was part of the continuing use of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) to strike at military targets deep in Russia by the Ukraine military. The attack reported here was on a munitions factory. Attacks at military-manufacturing targets well behind the active battlefield is nothing new and is part of long accepted military doctrine. Fires and explosions reported occurred, but there is no confirmation (actually there are denials) from the Russian government.

The headline, however, presages a potential problem that I identified in a 1988 article in Army Chemical Review, attacks against chemical manufacturing facilities releasing toxic chemicals into the environment acting as an ‘inadvertent’ chemical warfare attack. Such attacks could be used as a military terror attack in enemy rear areas without having to worry about manufacturing chemical weapons. Drones could be used to attack large water treatment facilities, for example, potentially releasing large clouds of chlorine gas.

Unfortunately, such UAS attacks need not be limited to attacks by military forces. Terrorists could conduct such attacks with relatively low-cost commercial drone attacks on any number of chemical manufacturing facilities. Currently, there is little or nothing being done to prevent such attacks, and the one program in the United States that could have possibly been used for defense of such facilities, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program ended in 2023 due to congressional inaction. Actions to revive that program are unlikely in the incoming Trump Administration, Trump after all did try to defund CFATS back in 2020.