Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, there were other smaller-scale outbreaks such as SARS as well as the H1N1 pandemic flu scare in the early 2000s that triggered changes in public health approaches. One such change was the establishment of the Department of Defense Advanced Development and Manufacturing (DoD-ADM) Facility in Alachua, Florida.
A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-sponsored evaluation of the U.S. government’s biological medical countermeasure (MCM) response capacity conducted in 2009 following the H1N1 influenza spread, identified an unmet need to rapidly develop, license, and manufacture biological MCMs required to protect military and civilian populations during time of CBRN crisis, which includes naturally occurring Pandemics as well as deliberate attacks. From that report, a memorandum was created in 2010, by John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, to Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, to “establish agile and flexible advanced development and manufacturing capabilities to support the development, licensure, and production of medical countermeasures that address the needs of our military and the nation.”