Brigadier General Jonathan Treacy tells Gwyn Winfield about the role of the Joint Task Force Civil Support in the time of HRFs and CCMRFs

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1 Brigadier General Jonathan Treacy tells Gwyn Winfield about the role of the Joint Task Force Civil Support in the time of HRFs and CCMRFs Y ou have to keep up when it comes to acronyms; if you are not PDQ, your TLAs have got away from you. Occasionally, however, the generation of a three-letter acronym has something bigger behind it than work for the acronym monkey. Earlier this year the Quadrennial Defense Review enshrined the creation of the Homeland Response Forces (HRFs), which were going to take the place of two of the CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces (CCMRFs), none of which had any impact on the Civil Support Teams (CSTs) or the CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package (CERF-P), which are National Guard assets. The remaining CCMRF, that reports to Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS), is going to be rebranded as a Defense CBRNE Response Force (DCRF) I hope you have all kept up, because it only gets more complicated from here! Prior to the HRFs, the response level ran via the CSTs, CERF-P and then to elements of the CCMRF, so as the requirement for aid grew, so did the force. The CCMRFs were the largest element three planned units of approximately 4,500 personnel. Their role was varied but fixed at the upper end by the worst that terrorist units could throw at the continental United States the ten-kiloton (kt) nuclear warhead. The premise, seemingly, was based on overmatch whatever the terrorist could plan, the CCMRF would be able to deal with. There was no doubt, however, that a small number of such large organisations were going to find it difficult to be agile and cover all eventualities. The HRFs, with approximately 500 personnel, follow the ten FEMA regions, allowing a greater degree of flexibility. As such they have allowed the shelving of two of the three CCMRF forces so it is not a replacement so much as a supplement. Yet doesn t this increase the original problem of the CCMRFs their lack of ubiquity? Doesn t one CCMRF, which has now become larger, have less of a capability to get to where it is needed? Brigadier General (Brig. Gen.) Treacy suggested otherwise, indicating that, while the force had got larger, it had also got quicker on it s feet. In reorganising to a Defense CBRNE Response Force (DCRF), we have increased to somewhere in the region of 5,200-5,400 personnel, and that increase of 800-1,000 personnel will be in the life-saving arena such as medical response capabilities, he said. In respect to the response times, in addition to putting more emphasis on more forces at the front end the lifesaving we are also reducing the response time by 50 percent, so we are getting more immediate help to the incident area quicker. We are working toward improving our time of response while we increase our immediate response capacity. The first responder elements of the DCRF those that are going to hopefully make a difference to people s lives are expected to move within 24 hours of notification. Yet for a force that has so many medical personnel, what are they going to do 24 hours after a chemical release? While they can provide support to the civil authority, in terms of being able to rest civilian doctors, it is the facility itself, the hospital, that is going to be full and expeditionary military centres need longer than 24 hours to set up. So does this therefore mean the medical support staff can specialise in certain areas that they won t need to do triage and blast injuries, but they might need to be able to focus more on biological rather than chemical? Brig. Gen. Treacy suggested it was not that clear cut, and that the remit of the DCRF was so large it was difficult to rule out any scenario. 14 CBRNe WORLD Autumn

2 Changing up Northcom I am unaware of any move toward narrowing the scope of the medical response or the chemical companies that would be responders to a chlorine spill, or something of that nature, he said. Each state has CSTs as well as the CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages, that are also aligned and capable of doing that immediate response activity, so it is a kind of building block approach to getting forces there quickly. Not that we are waiting to be asked and waiting on the arrival of one force before we start to move another force; it is an interoperable system that incorporates local and state first responders as well as the federal first responders. As well as the advantage of size, the CCMRFs also had the ability to provide support to each other so if the event was so large it went beyond the capability of a CCMRF, it could call on support from the others. With the loss of the other two, it does seem that, if an incident is big enough to swamp a CCMRF, then all the HRFs will be squandered in penny packets rather than critical mass. Again, Brig. Gen. Treacy suggested it was not that straightforward. We moved away from a second and third CCMRF, but each HRF in its FEMA region would account for one CCMRF; 500 multiplied by ten gives you 5,000 personnel, he said. Those personnel for the CCMRF number two were principally reservist and guardsmen, so it is more or less a one-for-one exchange. The advantage of the HRFs is that the tyranny of distance is mitigated somewhat by having them among the FEMA region. In addition to the HRFs and the DCRF, we will also have a couple of standing command and control headquarters. These are trained and ready to accept mobilised reserve forces as well, as other active forces that were not assigned to the CCMRF mission under the organisation of the DCRF. From a contingency application we have the HRFs, equivalent to a CCMRF, the DCRF, which is a robusted CCMRF. The remaining forces would be sourced on a contingency basis if we needed to deal with incidents in other areas of the country, giving us some reserve capability to deal with more than two incidents that are ongoing simultaneously. This also means that the individual state has more control over what assets it gets for better or worse as the FEMA regions will have a number of CSTs, one HRF and at least one CERF- P. With so much in the states control with the ability to stamp down on an incident in the first three to four hours what role is left for the DCRF? What is to stop the governor deciding he can handle the incident with the forces at his disposal? When he realises he cannot, it might be too late to bring in the DCRF at the optimal time? Whenever there is a serious incident, the JTF-CS will send out advanced teams to assist in the assessment of the situation, said Brig. Gen. Treacy. They go out in a matter of hours. We are always on alert and ready, so as the situation develops we have a team that can provide the assessment of the situation. They go to the incident and meet up with the state emergency operations centre and begin to immediately co-ordinate, in respect to the magnitude of the problem, the capabilities that the state can bring to bear and the regional capability that the HRF can bring to bear. Emergency management compacts between the states locally will also be calculated, and these can be done rapidly. These come back to me, and I can make recommendations up to the commander of United States Northern Command as to whether or not he should work with the Secretary of Defense and start us moving towards the incident centre. There are many activities that are ongoing and are designed this way, in parallel rather Autumn 2010 CBRNe WORLD 15

3 Changing up than in series. It is a mistake that folks make that we have to go to A, before we go to B and then C; we all plan to work the co-ordination issues in parallel to reduce unnecessary time to our response. Yet this doesn t escape the fact that there is now a regional level of capability where there was none before. Previously, there were a wealth of scenarios that could dwarf a CST and CERF-P; now, with the addition of the HRF, this seems less likely and pushes the DCRF up against the ten-kiloton threat or a major mass-casualty event. Once you realise where you are on the scale you can specialise, targeting the force towards that event, rather than all circumstances. I wouldn t say our thought processes are driving us into only using the DCRF for a major catastrophe, said Brig. Gen. Treacy. There are certainly specialised units that the DCRF is comprised of that may, in fact, be used in a bio or chem incident at a lower level than a masscasualty catastrophe. It is a good question, as one would assume the DCRF is sequestered off only to masscasualty, mass-catastrophe disasters that is not necessarily the way the thinking is going. We will certainly use the forces that are available, if that force is needed and will be the best solution to the problem at hand. I don t want to flog a dead horse, but we are working diligently to ensure that collaboration and assessment at the state, federal and FEMA level work in parallel so we can make quick and efficient decisions as to the best way to respond to an incident. While this might indeed be the case, it is notable that the exercise the JTF- CS was working on when we spoke was at the higher end of the scale. This particular incident that we are training for is a nuclear mass-casualty event; a small nuclear device with significant destruction in the city, said Brig Gen. Treacy. But that is not the only scenario we have used and I don t expect it to be the only scenario in the future, especially when we incorporate the training for collaboration with the homeland response forces. Navy Captain Michael Collins, Chief of Staff of the JTF-CS, explained further. We routinely do the 10kt device, he said. We do approximately four major training exercises a year, and it varies with the ebb and flow of the forces. We do 10kt once a year, because people will immediately need decon, large numbers of people will need medical treatment, and there will be a requirement to deal with large numbers of fatalities in a sensitive matter, etc. It is one of the most difficult scenarios to deal with in terms of sheer scope. We deal with other scenarios the biological pathogen that has spread via a terrorist organisation, or a natural outbreak such as H5N1; we need that capability in our back pocket. People always think about a terrorist incident or a WMD, but it could be an extremely large chlorine plant, or similar, that is cracked open catastrophically because of an earthquake. There are clearly some missions that play into the strengths of the JTF- CS, yet it is hard to see what they could do in a biological event. They are too slow to be there at the inception (even if it were detected) and the rest of the event is mainly a public health and terrorist investigation. Captain Collins suggested that the response time would be the same as the 10KT challenge and that this was actually a good example of the JTF-CS role. There is always a primary agency, DHHS and their support to FEMA, or if there is a terrorist nexus then the FBI. We see ourselves in the support role sent out to provide assistance at the origin of the incident, supporting organizations who were trying to prevent the spread of the biological agent, for example. We would be sent to the origination site where there would be the most casualties where we could run up shelters, run PODs (Points of Distribution) or help with supplies, or use our engineering assets to help with the running of the city. BG Treacy takes over JTF-CS during interesting times JTF-CS 16 CBRNe WORLD Autumn

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5 Changing up Brig. Gen. Treacy is relatively new in post, and clearly has joined the force in interesting times. But he clearly sees this as an opportunity to place the DCRF and JTF-CS in the force mix. The things we can effect most and best is ensuring, internally, the JTF-CS and the new DCRF are able to maximise our ability to respond, he said. The biggest challenge is how well we share information and assess the incident to which we are responding, to enable us to send the most critical teams first. Accuracy of information and speed of information are crucial, as is our ability CCMRF/DCRF is not just for tac Nukes, it is also planning for large scale disasters Northcom to work and collaborate across local and state government as well as federal assets that will be responding; these are critical to the early effectiveness of a DCRF concept. This is what I am concentrating on, to ensure that our first hours to respond are well thought out and well-supported by planning and training to those plans and refining them along the way. At the end of the day, failure is not an option. The DCRF is indeed going to have to run hard to prove itself, as there will now be ten HRFs out to make a name for themselves much as the CSTs did and not keen to look to big brother for support. There will also be a job of work in keeping the first responder, and other government agencies, aware of their presence as the HRFs also make themselves known. There will certainly be parts of the DCRF that will be well known to responders, such as the USMC CBIRF, and as they train with other forces, such as FDNY, there will come a greater understanding of the changes. Indeed, the one thing that is constant is change, and even if that slows there will still be the next generation of acronyms. 18 CBRNe WORLD Autumn