DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah - The U.S. Army used this Rhode Island-sized military zone for decades to perfect some of the most awful weapons of war, once blasting mountain caves with nerve gas to simulate an attack on holed-up Japanese troops.
But times and Dugway's mission have changed at this testing ground 65 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Now the mostly civilian work force is perfecting various defenses against chemical and germ warfare - work that has taken on urgency with fears of more terror attacks on U.S. soil.
As recently as the 1991 Persian Gulf war, "we just didn't have any good detectors," said Army microbiologist Jeff Mohr, who runs Dugway's heavily guarded Life Sciences laboratory, responsible for countering the threat of nasty pathogens.
"In the last 13 years we've made remarkable strides in detecting" chemical and biological agents before they can take a toll on unwary troops, he said.
Dugway has a separate chemical lab that tests new generations of gas masks, protective suits, shelters and a lightweight, hand-held detector that has yet to be released to soldiers.
It's evaluating different fabrics that promise to make chemical suits more comfortable, durable and fire- and water-resistant.
"The Army is eager to improve its suits," said Steven Brimhall, chief of Dugway's chemical lab, which stores the lethal stuff behind a double-padlocked, heavy steel door.
In their most promising device yet, scientists are developing a laser-beam detector to scan the horizon for distant chemical agents and biological particles. And Dugway is deploying an eight-wheeled Stryker personnel carrier outfitted with the latest gear that can move into a chemical zone and take samples for immediate testing.
"This is serial No. 1," said Brad Rowland, a chemist and technical director, showing off the first modified Stryker, which looks like a glorified SUV. It is undergoing field tests until November.
In 1995, Dugway narrowly escaped a round of military base closures. Now it has a fast-growing, $130 million budget.
"A lot of it has to do with world events," said Commander and Col. Gary Harter, 45, who joined the Army as a chemical corps officer in 1980 and is midway through a two-year stint as Dugway commander. "Now these programs are reaching maturity."
Dugway also is experimenting with some of the world's most sophisticated weather-monitoring systems and computers. They can plot the flow of gases over urban and mountainous terrain under various wind conditions. Salt Lake City was the site of one overnight experiment using a harmless gas before the 2002 Winter Olympics.
"The extent of vertical mixing" of the gas with atmospheric winds "was much more than we expected," chief Dugway meteorologist James Bowers said. His division also provides weather reports for military bombing ranges across the West.
The Army established Dugway in 1942 to counter the chemical and biological threat of Japan and Germany, and later, the Soviet Union.
"The Russians were capable of making 2 tons of dry anthrax a week at the height of their program," said Mohr, who served as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq in the early 1990s.
Over a restricted military zone of 1,300 square miles, bordered by an even larger bombing range, Dugway historically experimented with weapons ranging from incendiary bombs to all kinds of chemical and biological agents, including botulism, brucellosis, anthrax, bubonic plague, and tularemia.
"Dugway is a good place where you get lots of space to practice," Brimhall said.
Part of Dugway's mission now is to clean up the hundreds of dump sites left over from the Cold War, and the dangerous work is kept indoors.
Harter said Dugway hasn't released a live agent outdoors since 1968, when a mist of VX nerve agent killed a reported 6,400 sheep in nearby Skull Valley. The mishap was blamed on a stuck valve on an F-4 Phantom fighter testing an airborne sprayer.
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