DoD releases six new Project SHAD fact sheets

May 23, 2002 - WASHINGTON (DeploymentLINK) -- The Department of Defense released detailed fact sheets on six Cold War-era chemical and biological warfare tests. Release of the information is part of an on-going effort to provide information needed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to respond to some veterans’ claims that tests conducted in the 1960s affected their health. With the publication of these fact sheets, information on 12 tests have been evaluated and released for your review.

Project SHAD, an acronym for Shipboard Hazard and Defense, was part of the joint service chemical and biological warfare test program conducted during the 1960s. Project SHAD
encompassed tests designed to identify U.S. warships' vulnerabilities to attacks with chemical or biological warfare agents and to develop procedures to respond to such attacks while maintaining a war-fighting capability.

The SHAD program planned as many as a hundred individual tests and was part of the larger Deseret Test Center program. Many tests were never actually executed. DoD investigators
plan to look at all Deseret Test Center’s chemical and biological tests conducted between 1963 and 1970.