Cruise missiles adapted for bioweapons

A Soviet research program led by Pasechnik and colleagues developed hardware and procedures to retrofit cruise missiles with canisters designed to disperse liquid or powdered biological agents as aerosol clouds. The effort included designing moving-release platforms, impact‑fragmenting canisters, and upstream agent‑processing technologies (jet‑stream milling, drying, and microencapsulation). — Knowing that state actors engineered missile‑based biological delivery systems changes how policymakers and arms‑control experts assess threat vectors and the scope of verification needed for biological arms treaties.