The purpose of the tests done under Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense was 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 purpose of the land-based tests was generally to learn more about how chemical or biological agents behave under a variety of climatic, environmental and use conditions. To reveal details of the effectiveness of our defenses and details of our defensive procedures and equipment could compromise the safety of our service members. The DOD had no indication that this operational testing had any health effect on the personnel involved.

Deployment Health Support Directorate investigators questioned the Deseret Test Center personnel they interviewed on the reason for taking gargle samples and nasal swabs from vessel crew members. The practice was an informal, and largely undocumented, supplement to the mechanical samplers positioned throughout the test ships to measure organism penetration and dispersion. It appears that the data gathered may have been used to help validate mechanical samplers in the early tests where Bacillus globigii was the biological simulant being used, allowing the practice to be discontinued once samplers were optimally positioned. One known exception is that during the Autumn Gold test, gargle samples and nasal swabs were taken of crew members wearing protective masks to determine the effectiveness of the masks. These sample readings are documented in the Autumn Gold test report, but unfortunately are not linked to the crew members whom provided the samples.

The information Veterans Affairs needed was classified and was not centralized. The Deseret Test Center, the organization that ran the original tests, was closed in 1973. The investigation required a search for 40-year-old documents and records kept by different military services in different locations. It also required declassification of medically relevant information, without releasing military information that remains classified for valid operational security reasons.