Military Officer - December 2008 - (Page 52) When did the first CBRNE force become available? The first of October [2008]. Does it have airlift capability? The U.S. Transportation Command keeps a core element of airlift available and knows exactly what it takes to move this force. If America does have an incident, how do NORTHCOM’s responsibilities mesh with those of governors who can call up the National Guard? Whenever an event occurs, our operations center in Colorado Springs, Colo., immediately is in contact with the adjutant general of the state. He has a joint force headquarters, or small operations center, which becomes the point of contact for the state’s emergency management director to the National Guard. That is the hub where we gather information. At the same time we make another call to our own defense coordinating officer (DCO). There are 10 such officers assigned to each of the 10 Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] regions. Tied into FEMA’s regional director, the DCO begins to understand what the federal civilian response will be. While we determine the governor’s intent for military support, we’ll look at what we already have in the state. In Georgia, for example, [there] are seven to eight military The Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force (members seen here conducting a simulation) could fall under NORTHCOM in the event of a domestic incident. (right) Sgt. 1st Class Joe Garcia, USA, sets up communications equipment during hurricane-response training. This CBRNE force will be assigned to NORTHCOM? Yes. I will hold the trigger, with concurrence from the secretary on moving them. We’ll build two more CBRNE forces [in] the next two years to get a total of 13,000 folks available every day. They will be part active component and part Reserve and National Guard. Reserve units will be trained in home states but funded for this mission with federal money. Once we certify these forces, they will be on alert for one to two years and then rotate back into Guard and Reserve forces available for other contingencies. U.S. Army North, our land component commander in San Antonio, is creating and training two additional headquarters elements to fall in on top of these two CBRNE forces and provide the same type of command and control capability as our Joint Task Force Civil Support does. 52 MILITARY OFFICER DECEMBER 2008 Americans might be surprised at the resources going into these units, given that we hear little about the danger of such attacks on the homeland. The new forces recognize that, for a number of years, we’ve lived in a dangerous time. Adversaries now are very different than those we grew up with. It’s no longer a Cold War with the Soviet bloc, but we do have countries with significant conventional capability. More importantly, we see rogue nations like, potentially, North Korea and Iran, whose intentions are not clear or predictable. We see terrorists or narco-terrorists that don’t pay attention to traditional rules of war and want to gain weapons of mass effect. I don’t think today we are in danger of one of them having that technology. But I don’t want to build a capability to respond after we think they have it. This is prudent planning. PHOTOS: LEFT, STAFF SGT. M. ERICK REYNOLDS, USAF; RIGHT, PATTY BIELLING
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