We have spent billions of dollars to protect U.S. troops from attacks with biological weapons, and yet as America prepared for war with Saddam Hussein in December 1990, Pentagon officials sheepishly acknowledged the government's stockpile of vaccines was woefully inadequate. Why? Because, as this investigative study revealed, the Army's biological defense research program is misguided in its aims and poorly managed. There are serious problems of low productivity, poorly conceived research that concentrates on marginal or trivial problems, lack of legitimate peer review of research, and a complete absence of coherent policy purpose.