Porton Down is a United Kingdom government military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down airfield operated by QinetiQ. On maps, the land surrounding the complex is identified as a "Danger Area".It is home to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, known as Dstl. Dstl is an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the site is believed to be one of the United Kingdom's most sensitive and secretive government facilities for military research, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defence. The Dstl site occupies 7,000 acres (28 km2).The site is commonly confused with the nearby chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear (CBRN) training facility, the Defence CBRN Centre at Winterbourne Gunner.HistoryPorton Down opened in 1916 as the Royal Engineers Experimental Station for testing chemical weapons in response to the earlier German use of this means of war in 1915. The laboratory's remit was to conduct research and development regarding chemical weapons agents used by the British armed forces in the First World War, such as chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene.

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