A recent Rand report on chemical and biological weapons (CBW) identifies unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) as a feasible CBW delivery means by potential adversaries like North Korea. With significant concern regarding the ability to defend against a delivery vehicle several meters in size, imagine the difficulty in defending against a future scenario involving swarms of micro UAVs (MAVs) carrying genetic weapons with the potential to create powerful and precise political, economical, and military effects from a tiny payload. With a motivation towards avoiding technological surprise, this paper notes emerging trends in several technology areas that collectively point towards this possibility. In particular, biomimetics, micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), and nanotechnology offer great promise in enabling feasible MAVs as delivery platforms, while these same technologies along with genetic research may enable the packaging of powerful and precise weaponry (potentially target-specific) in a microscopic payload that could be carried by these MAVs. The MAV/genetic weapon combination may offer a capability with enough power, precision, discrimination, and military utility to challenge the notion of all biological weapons being considered weapons of mass destruction (WMD), thus widening their potential use. This paper begins with a discussion of general technological themes and the law of unintended consequences... themes that are continually reinforced as specific enabling technologies are encountered throughout the essay. Subsequent sections build on this foundation by investigating several technology challenges specific to the hypothetical threat system, MAVs carrying genetic weapons. The paper concludes with a discussion of existing or potential responses and offers recommendations on technologies and information the U.S. should seek to ban, delay or control.

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