National emergency exercises emphasize real-world experience
Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and USNORTHCOM, the United States Northern Command, invited WND staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi to visit Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., to observe Day Three of the NORAD-USNORTHCOM exercise Vigilant Shield 2008.
Corsi was the first outside news reporter allowed inside the Joint Interagency Coordination Group, or JIACG, to observe command center operations during a real-time national training exercise.
This fifth part in the series is based on an interview WND conducted Oct 18 with Renuart.
By Jerome R. Corsi
Joint Interagency Coordination Group responds to simulated attacks
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – It was Day 3 of NORAD-USNORTHCOM's exercise, Vigilant Shield 08 and Top Officers 4, and the "reports" were coming in of the explosion of "dirty bombs" in Guam, at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix and at the Steel Bridge in Portland, Ore.
The Joint Interactive Agency Coordination Group staging the exercise to test the national response to the detonation of radiological dispersal devices was on duty.
"This is an exercise designed to look at the national response if we would have a terrorist attack," explained Michael B. Perini, director of public affairs at NORAD-USNORTHCOM. "The goal of the JIACG is to work out the coordination and processes we need as a nation to manage the terrorist emergency and to do that in a very realistic environment so if it happens for real.
"We want to avoid having to exchange business cards at the scene of the accident, as it were," Perini stressed. The JIACG involves 40 or more "resident" agencies of the federal government that have assigned permanent representatives to the NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters at Peterson Air Force base in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Additionally, some 20 non-governmental partners, including private enterprise, are linked by computer and teleconference into the daily JIACG assessment meeting that convenes in the "battle cell" at 9:30 each morning during the exercise.
State and local government players in the field are linked into the daily JIACG assessment from the NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters, with resident players participating in person and remote players by communications with players in the field.
"This is all about relationship building," Perini stressed. "It's all about collaboration and coordination.
"A challenge for us here at NORAD-USNORTHCOM is that we are in support," Perini acknowledged. "So, we are doing everything we can to work at the local, state and federal levels to be able to show people that if they need certain talent, equipment or expertise, the military is there to help."
Michael Kucharek, current operations chief tasked with media relations and Web management in NORAD-USNORTHCOM public affairs, explained the history and context of the NORAD-USNORTHCOM mission that led to the simulation exercise.
"USNORTHCOM was created in the wake of 9/11," Kucharek began. "Obviously, there was before no combatant command responsible for defending the continental United States. Before then it was mostly law enforcement left to the states and U.S. Code Title 14 authority under the Coast Guard for maritime. The terrorist attack on 9/11 was the catalyst for U.S. Northern Command coming into existence."
Kucharek said USNORTHCOM has 'two basic missions: defense support of civil authorities defined by the National Response Plan on how we support that effort and then also homeland defense."
"Now what is homeland defense?" Kucharek asked. "It's preventing attacks before they would occur and to defeat any aggressions aimed at the United States. Our role is to support the state and local governments, to bring Department of Defense military resources to bear in a national emergency when the states and local governments need help."
The national exercises eventually will include all 50 states and the territories.
"This way, when something happens in a particular state, we have a better chance that everybody knows what their lanes of responsibility are in advance," he said.
"That way we at USNORTHCOM hope to avoid being the 800-pound guerilla coming in," Kucharek continued. "We want to avoid disrupting what the states and their emergency operations centers and emergency operations managers have to put in place to mitigate the emergency for the citizens of their states."
"Our goal is to ask, 'What is the unique capability that the Department of Defense Title 10 forces would offer, as opposed to something that the National Guard doesn't have?'" Kucharek said.
"So, we are building relationships at the state level, so they know what we're all about, what we can provide, what we can't provide, and what our intentions are," he continued. "We're available and leaning forward for the states when they request it, once we get approval from the secretary of defense."
A new National Response Framework, superseding the current National Response Plan, has been drafted and placed on the Department of Homeland Security website for comment.
Kucharek walked through how a Request for Assistance, or RFA, will work under the National Response Framework, all the way from first responders to the national level.
"In any emergency, the state local assets are the first response," he stressed. "What those resources are not sufficient, then there's a Request for Assistance that goes out from the state governor to the president that says, 'Hey, we need some help here. Can you help us out?'
"From there, the president would direct some kind of response from the Department of Defense," Kucharek explained. "Then a Department of Defense-approved mission assignment comes forward and from there we would deploy forces through our force providers to get assets on the ground."
"There's a formal process," Kucharek emphasized. "When an RFA comes in, a mission assignment is given, but only after being directed by the president or the secretary of defense."
Reality TV
Throughout the NORAD-USNORTHCOM simulation at Peterson Air Force Base, flat screen televisions broadcast simulated newscasts.
"We contracted with Forrest Sawyer who used to work for ABC," Perini explained.
"Throughout the exercise, we run our own news network, VNN, that covers the exercise in real time," he continued. "Sawyer's job is to act exactly like the national news networks would act. We cover the event from the scene, and VNN has a staff of reporters that grill the players as if this were a real world event."
While interviewing Perini and Kucharek, the VNN broadcast showed Sawyer grilling officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sawyer was asking tough questions, trying to get accurate assessments of the danger to the population in Phoenix and Portland of the radiation from the detonated dirty bombs.
At this point in the exercise, the JIACG assessment had determined that Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix would completely shut down, as would the Steel Bridge in Portland.
We asked Perini how success in the exercise was going to be measured.
"Success will be measured on the amount of cooperation and collaboration we are able to move forward based on the last exercise," Perini answered.
"If we see anything we can improve from the last exercise, then we take those 'lessons-observed' and make them 'lessons-learned' and I think that will be another measure of success for this exercise," he explained.
"I will tell you that, even three days into this exercise, folks are already seeing the value from Arizona and from Oregon as well as here, in terms of working the training aspects," Perini continued.
"We have a lot of new people in this exercise and now they are going to have one under their belt," he pointed out. "That is another measure of success, especially if we ever have to do this for real, because now these players will have experience."
Perini emphasized that the simulation is "not just a table-top exercise or a command post exercise." "We are actually moving real people, but not in large numbers, especially since this exercise has a top offices focus, but we are actually putting people on airplanes," he said.
"If we say we are going to move a unit, then we have gone to the point of actually identifying a unit, identifying them by name, because it helps to see if there is a gap and it helps us with the training."
Perini said the exercise gets to the point of identifying the kind of airplane, its call sign and how long it will take to arrive at its destination.
"That's our logistics folks doing that in detail," he said, "because really the exercise is all about being able to plan, and if we can do that now, then that is going to help us do it for real."
Perini pointed out there actually werepeople at Sky Harbor going through the exercise, and, in Oregon, "we actually have students playing high school students going through the exercise as if something had happened and they are not faced with having to recover."
"Portland play is very extensive," he said. "The governor of Oregon, secretary of homeland security Chertoff and our commander General Renuart will hold a real world press conference describing what's going on in Portland to communicate that to the citizens in that great state."
Kucharek said that finally, "We take from the exercise the lessons observed and then looking at where we need to take the scenario to others. Maybe we need to circle back and work through some of the gaps. But we design them so that they are very realistic and are designed to make the nation safer.
"The terrorist threat is for real and we have these exercises designed to help us meet that threat," he concluded. "These national exercises are very critical to us and we need to continue conducting them."
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