Will We Be Ready for the Next War?

TO THE EDITOR—The title of Dr Schooley’s editorial, “All’s (Almost) Quiet on the Western Front: Will We Be Ready for the Next War?” [1] raises a key question: What is the role of the US Department of Defense (DoD) in the Ebola outbreak response? Because Ebola is a biological warfare threat, theDoDhas been developingmedical countermeasures through its biological defense program for more than a decade. Six DoD-sponsored candidates, intended for biological defense under field conditions, were accelerated in collaboration with civilian partners to support outbreak response. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorizations to 2 DoD-sponsored polymerase chain reaction–based diagnostic assays, EZ-1 and BT-E. DoD provides test kits to support African and US treatment centers; >20 000 kits are pre-positioned