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Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, or often known more simply as Porton Down, is a United Kingdom government facility for military research, including CBRN defence. The complex is located near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England, and is operated by the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), an Executive Agency of the MOD.

Until 2001 Porton Down was part of the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. DERA was spilt into QinetiQ, initially a fully government owned company, and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Dstl incorporates all of DERA's activities deemed unsuitable for the privatisation planned for QinetiQ, particularly Porton Down.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Post WW1 1.3 Second World War 1.4 Post war period 2 Support of British Forces in the Gulf 3 Controversy 3.1 Secrecy 3.2 Deaths attributed to Porton Down 3.3 Use of Animals 3.4 UAP Research and Investigation 4 Defence CBRN Centre 5 See also 6 External links

Porton Down was set up to provide a proper scientific basis for the British use of chemical warfare, in response to the earlier German use of this means of war in 1915. Work at Porton started in March 1916. At the time, only a few cottages and farm buildings were scattered on the Downs at Porton and Idmiston.

Porton Down originally opened in 1916 as the Royal Engineers Experimental Station as a site for testing chemical weapons. The laboratory's remit was to conduct research and development regarding chemical weapons agents such as chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas by the British armed forces in the First World War.

By 1918 the original two huts had become a large hutted camp with 50 officers and 1,100 other ranks. Studies in the Great War mainly concerned the dissemination of chlorine and phosgene and, later, mustard gas. By May 1917 the focus for anti-gas defence and respirator development had moved from London to Porton Down.

After the Armistice, staff at Porton Down were reduced to a skeleton level.

In 1919 the War Office set up the Holland Committee to consider the future of chemical warfare and defence. By 1920, the Cabinet agreed to the Committee’s recommendation that work should continue at Porton Down and from that date a slow permanent building programme began coupled with the gradual recruitment of civilian scientists. By 1922, there were 380 servicemen, 23 scientific and technical civil servants and 25 “civilian subordinates”. By 1925 the civilian staff had doubled.

By 1926 the chemical defence aspects of Air Raid Precautions (ARP) for the civilian population was added to the Station’s responsibilities. By 1938, the international situation was such that offensive chemical warfare research and development and the production of war reserve stocks of chemical warfare agents by the chemical industry was authorised by the Cabinet. Britain had ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol in 1930 with reservations which permitted the use of chemical warfare agents only in retaliation.

The CCU is sometimes confused with the Health Protection Agency Porton Down at nearby Porton Down, with which it occasionally collaborated but was not officially connected.

Chemical warfare was not used by any nation during the Second World War but as Allied armies penetrated Germany, operational stockpiles of munitions and weapons were discovered which contained new chemical warfare agents; the highly toxic organophosphorous nerve agents, unknown to Britain and the Allies.

During the Second World War, research concentrated on chemical weapons such as nitrogen mustard, plus biological weapons including Anthrax and Botulinum toxin. In 1942, highly successful tests of an anthrax bio-weapon developed at Porton Down were held at Gruinard Island.

When WW2 ended, the advanced state of German technology regarding nerve agents such as Tabun, Sarin and Soman surprised the allies and they were eager to capitalise on it. Subsequent research took the newly discovered German nerve agents as a starting point, and eventually VX nerve agent was developed at Porton Down in 1952.

The late 1940s and early 1950s saw research and development at Porton Down aimed at providing Britain with the means to arm itself with a modern nerve agent based capability and to develop specific means of defence against these agents. In the end these aims came to nothing on the offensive side because of the decision to abandon any sort of British chemical warfare capability. On the defensive side there were years of difficult work to develop the means of prophylaxis, therapy, rapid detection and identification, decontamination and more effective protection of the body against nerve agents, capable of exerting effects through the skin, the eyes and respiratory tract.

Tests were carried out on servicemen to determine the effects of nerve agents on human subjects, with one recorded death due to a nerve gas experiment. There have been persistent allegations of unethical human experimentation at Porton Down, such as those relating to the death of Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison, aged 20, in 1953. Maddison was taking part in sarin nerve agent toxicity tests. Sarin was dripped on to his arm and he died shortly afterwards as a result.

In the 1950s the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment became involved with the development of CS, a riot control agent, and took an increasing role in trauma and wound ballistics work. Both these facets of Porton Down’s work had become more important because of the situation in Northern Ireland.

In 1970 the Chemical Defence Establishment became the title of the senior establishment at Porton Down and remained for the next 21 years. Preoccupation with defence against the nerve agents continued but in the 1970s and 1980s the Establishment was also concerned with studying reported chemical warfare by Iraq against Iran and against its own Kurdish population.

Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the problems increased, culminating in active operational support of British Forces in the Gulf region. After the Gulf cease-fire the establishment continued to provide technical support for the United Nations Special Commission set-up to oversee the destruction of the Iraqi capability to use nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. This continued until 1999 when Iraq withdrew co-operation from the Commission.

The military facility has used human test subjects in the testing of Sarin of which a case settlement has been made [1] and the use, again on test subjects, of Nerve Gas [2].

Most of the work carried out at Porton Down has to date remained secret, and the UK Government have been criticised for not revealing the true extent of the research that was carried out on servicemen. It is known that amongst current research at Porton is the study of MRSA and Anthrax. The facility produces a high efficacy anthrax vaccine which is sold throughout the world.

Dstl Porton Down has also been involved in human-testing.

A second inquest on Ronald Maddison commenced in May 2004, after many years of lobbying by his relatives and their supporters. It later found the death of Ronald Maddison to have been unlawful [3], however this has since been challenged by the Ministry of Defence. [4]

In February 2006 three ex-servicemen were awarded compensation in an out of court settlement after claims they were given LSD without their consent during the 1950s. [5]

Dstl Porton Down is also involved in animal-testing, where the "three Rs" of Reduce (the number of animals used), Refine (animal procedures) and Replace (animal tests with non-animal tests) are used as the basic code of practice. Nevertheless, there has been a significant increase in animal experimentation in recent years. During 2005, 21,118 procedures were undertaken which involved the use of animals [6], nearly double the number undertaken in 1997 [7]. In 2005, approximately 95% of the animals used (20,016) were mice. Other animals used included guinea pigs, rats, pigs, ferrets, sheep, and non-human primates (believed to be marmosets, rhesus monkeys and macaques). The figures released in 2005 also reveal that one cow was used in a secret experiment in 2004 [8].

Different departments at Porton Down use animal experiments in different ways. Dstl’s Biomedical Sciences department is involved with drug evaluation and efficacy testing (toxicology, pharmacology, physiology, behavioural science, human science), trauma and surgery studies, and animal breeding. The Physical Sciences department also uses animals in its ‘Armour Physics’ research.

Like other aspects of research at Porton Down, precise details of animal experiments are generally kept secret. However, media reports have suggested they include exposing monkeys to anthrax, draining the blood of pigs and injecting them with E. coli bacteria, and exposing animals to a variety of lethal, toxic nerve agents [9]. Different animals are used for very different purposes. According to a 2002 report from the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Defence, mice are used mainly to research "the development of vaccines and treatments for microbial and viral infections", while pigs are used to "develop personal protective equipment to protect against blast injury to the thorax" [10].

Porton Down is also suspected of being a research facility for UAP studies, research and investigation. Some even believe it to be involved with UAP crash and retrievens.

It is believed that personnel from Porton Down [11] visited Rendlesham in 1980 after the Rendlesham Forest Incident. In 1999 Nick Pope, a UK Government MOD Agent, published a book, 'Operation Thunder Child', talking about alien bodies (EBE's), being taken to Porton Down [12] and in 1996, British researcher Tony Dodd surfaced with a story about alien bodies supposedly taken to Porton Down from the site of an alleged UFO crash on the Berwyn Mountains in North Wales most commonly referred to as the Berwyn Mountain Incident. [13] [14]

Lord Hill-Norton asked Her Majesty's Government "Whether they are aware of any involvement by Special Branch in the investigation of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident [HL303]"

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean stated "Special Branch officers may have been aware ofthe incident but would not have shown any interest unless there was evidence of a potential threat to national security. No such interest appears ot have been shown." You Can't Tell the People

The Ministry of Defences's usual comment when describing the "alleged" incident is that it was merely "lights in the sky". But here we have confirmation that there was an incident and that Special Branch may have been aware of it.

Porton Down: Did they investigate the RAF Watton incident?

According to Harry Thompson, a former RAF secdurity police officer at RAF Watton, a team of four British Government scients had visited the forest after the Watton incident. Thompson suspected they were from Porton Down. On 25 January 2001 Lord Hill-Norton asked Her Majesty's Government:

• Whether personnel from Porton Down visited Rendlesham Forest or the area surrounding RAF Walton in December 1980 or January 1981; and whether they are aware of any tests carried out in either of those two areas aimed at assessing any nuclear, biological or chemical hazard. [HL301][15] [16] - You Can't Tell the People.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean stated that "The staff at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) Chemical and Biological Defence (CBD) laboratories at Porton Down have made a thorough search of their archives and have found no record of any such visits." [17] [18] - [You Can't Tell the People]

Although, Georgina Bruni, author of the definitive account on the Rendlesham Forest Incident entitled You Can't Tell the People commented that "that should have been RAF "Watton" not Walton. According to my witness from RAF Watton, some agency, presumably from Porton Down, did visit Watton and investigate the area on the perimeter of the base. Then the question is, if they were not from Porton Down, which is the place one would expect it to be, where was the unit from? I expect like the first Answer, any reference to this event has been carefully logged elsewhere." [19] [20]

One has to ask, if it was not a unit from Porton Down, who were these men and where were they from? Recall also that Americans were seen in the forest on the perimeter of the Watton base. Could these have been researchers from Langley (the CIA research establishment)? Could this same group, who were said to have investigated the Rendlesham Forest landing sites, also have investigated the perimeter of RAF Watton. - You Can't Tell the People.

The Defence CBRN Centre is based at Winterbourne Gunner, south of Porton Down. It is a tri-service location, with the RAF being the lead service. There is also a civil police training presence at the site. It is responsible for all matters relating to CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons) warfare for the UK armed forces.

• RAF Rudloe Manor
• The United Kingdom and weapons of mass destruction
• Service Volunteer Programme

• British Ministry of Defence official Porton Down page
• University of Kent Porton Down Project
• Porton Down: A Brief History
• Wiltshire police Operation Antler information
• BBC News report, November 2002: Nerve gas inquest to be re-opened
• Porton Down Veterans' Support Group
• Letter from the Department of Health to Health Authorities regarding the Porton Down volunteers
• BBC News, MI6 payouts over secret LSD tests
• EyeSpy mag article on Porton Down
• BBC News - MoD pays out over nerve gas death
• Lyrics Peter Hammill: Porton Down (from pH7)
• Song about Porton Down
• Gaddum Papers at the Royal Society