SUFFOLK, Va. –
More than 200 military and emergency response leaders met June 18-20 to discuss and synchronize the role military responders' will play following a complex catastrophe - such as a nuclear detonation or biological attack - in the homeland.
The three-day event allowed Joint Task Force Civil Support personnel and commanders from about 60 Department of Defense Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear Response Force units and other emergency management agencies to review how thousands of responders could respond to a catastrophic disaster in the U.S., whether manmade or natural.
Consequently, the Fort Eustis, Va.-based JTF-CS hosted event at the Lockheed Martin Center for Innovation provided a forum for commanders of the on-coming Response Force units to discuss their individual plans to transport and employ their units during a response.
Dubbed a rehearsal of concept, or "ROC" drill, discussions turned to detailed analysis by JTF-CS' Commanding General, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeff W. Mathis III, on how military responders will synchronize efforts for an upcoming field training and validation exercise called "Vibrant Response."
That exercise serves as the crux for U.S. Northern Command to validate the nearly 5,200 response force and also evaluates the operational capabilities of about 9,000 Department of Defense personnel in support of a homeland response following a "complex catastrophe."
"The purpose of Vibrant Response is to confirm that the units that make up the Defense CBRN Response Force can execute the mission," said Mathis. "I believe that we will have a successful confirmation."
JTF-CS provides command and control of the DCRF, which has some 88 different military units located at more than 36 locations throughout the U.S. The Response Force provides a variety of life-saving and sustaining response capabilities focused around six core capabilities: mission command, identification and detection, search and extraction, decontamination, medical triage and stabilization, and medical evacuation.
Although JTF-CS responds only at the request of a state's governor, JTF-CS and the Response Force - which is broken down into three battalion task forces - must be prepared to transport personnel and equipment in a matter of hours to conduct life-saving and life-sustaining operations in support of a lead federal agency, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That could mean prioritizing the movement of units located closest to the incident site first to maximize resources to save lives.
"We could be sitting in this room right now and an event could take place and we could be called out," said Mathis, JTF-CS "This world is a very uncertain world so we never
really know when we're going to get called into the front."
To that end, Mathis and his staff, along with task force leaders, emphasized a continued need during planning and response operations to collaborate with responders at all levels of government before an event occurs. Attendees reviewed individual unit response briefs, participated in discussions on unit capabilities, and culminated with an hour-by-hour domestic response "walkthrough" of military support to a state-led response following a domestic incident.
Equally important to ensuring an effective response is establishing relationships between JTF-CS and Response Force leaders, according to U.S. Air Force Maj. Joe Legradi, deputy director for JTF-CS Future Operations.
"We are...putting faces to names so if we had to respond, we will already have a familiarization of the personnel in those units that we will be working with," said Legradi. "We are also discussing the employment concept of the DCRF so everyone will be aware of the response operations which will make for a more rapid response which will ultimately save more lives."
The exercise provided a forum for collaborative discussion on not only how state and federal military units respond to disasters, but also their individual ability to respond according to a set timeline - called the "N hour sequence" - following a disaster and an anticipated call from a state for military assistance.
Mathis said the key to identifying possible "friction points" that could lead to a degradation or delay in life-saving operations is visualizing how individual units will work through deployment to the incident scene and identify areas of conflict throughout the response.
"The unique thing about our mission is that we never know when we're going to be called out," said Mathis. "That is why it's important to always be ready."