It is located on Fort Detrick, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., and is a subordinate lab of the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), headquartered on the same installation.

USAMRIID is the only laboratory of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) equipped to study highly hazardous viruses at Biosafety Level 4 within positive pressure personnel suits.

This mission, and all work done at USAMRIID, must remain within the spirit and letter of both President Richard Nixon's 1969 and 1970 Executive Orders renouncing the use of biological and toxin weapons, and the U.N.

USAMRIID traces its institutional lineage to the early 1950s, when Lt. Col. Abram S. Benenson was appointed as medical liaison officer to the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (BWL) at Camp (later Fort) Detrick to oversee biomedical defensive problems.

(One of the AMU's first responsibilities was to oversee all aspects of Project CD-22, the exposure of volunteers to aerosols containing a highly pathogenic strain of Coxiella burnetii, the causal agent of Q fever.)

The institute's mission did not really change and it received additional funding and personnel authorizations to hire biomedical and laboratory scientists who were losing their jobs as a result of the termination of the United States' offensive BW studies.

A formal agreement was signed with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at this time stipulating that USAMRIID would house and treat highly contagious infections in laboratory personnel should any occur.

Thurman was particularly concerned about the application of genetic engineering technology to alter conventional microorganisms and his review resulted in a five-year plan of expansion for research into medical defensive measures at USAMRIID.

Senator John Glenn, chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs asked the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the validity of DoD's Biological Defense Research Program.

While investigating an outbreak of simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF) in 1989, USAMRIID electron microscopist Thomas Geisbert discovered filoviruses similar in appearance to Ebola in tissue samples taken from a crab-eating macaque imported from the Philippines to a facility operated by Hazleton Laboratories (now Fortrea) in Reston, Virginia.

Following the conflict, USAMRIID physicians and engineers were key members of a United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) Inspection Team that evaluated the BW capabilities in Iraq during the 1990s.

In late 2001, USAMRIID became the FBI's reference lab for forensic evidence related to the bioterror incident known as "Amerithrax" in which anthrax-laden letters were sent through the US Postal Service, killing 5 people and sickening 17 others.

[5] Also in August 2008, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren ordered the creation of a team of medical and military experts to review security measures at the institute.

Representatives John D. Dingell and Bart Stupak have stated that they will lead investigations into security at the Institute as part of a review of all the nation's biodefense labs.

This delay to the project delivery is in part due to a fire within the BSL4 laboratory area[9] In August 2019, all research at USAMRIID was indefinitely put on hold after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited the organization for failing to meet biosafety standards.