There is no question that the Department of Defense has a responsibility to support the federal response to catastrophic events. The response to a nuclear detonation within the United States is the most demanding exercise of possible homeland-security scenarios. And one cannot question the enthusiasm and expertise shown by military and civilian responders as they train to respond to “unthinkable” terrorist incidents. But is it good defense policy?
As our forces return from more than a decade of fighting in the Middle East, indications are that the defense budget will continue to decline. Personnel levels within the Army and Marine Corps will drop. Few people are willing to critically examine the planned DOD response to a domestic CBRN terrorist incident, in part because Congress desires a strong domestic-response capability and in part because the White House has stated that it is a top national-security priority. But are the current measures in place the correct ones to address this particular challenge?
The U.S. government has unintentionally exaggerated the threat, and the roles and missions of the various executive agencies involved have not been adequately assessed or integrated. Basic risk-management principles mandate a review and reform of how the DOD plans to support the federal response to domestic CBRN incidents.
Homefront Wargaming
In 2012, U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Army North conducted Vibrant Response 13 at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Indiana and other locations in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky. More than 9,000 military and civilian personnel responded to a simulated 10-kiloton nuclear detonation in the United States. This national-level drill was the latest in a long series of exercises that have tested the ability of military forces to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) terrorist incident.
The exercise included participation from National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams (WMD CSTs), the Ohio National Guard CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package (CERF-P), and active-duty and reserve units from across the country organized under a Joint Task Force for Civil Support. These forces practiced life-saving and life-sustaining missions to include technical assessments, search and rescue, medical evacuation and treatment, engineering, and logistics support (such as food and water). Because state and local emergency responders dealing with the effects of a nuclear detonation would be overwhelmed by the scope of the disaster, military forces plan to support the federal response to such a catastrophic incident, per the National Response Framework.
Collectively, the military forces responsible are called the CBRN Response Enterprise. This includes 57 WMD CSTs (one per state and U.S. territory), 17 CERF-Ps (located in FEMA regions), and ten Homeland Response Forces (also in the FEMA regions) under the National Guard Bureau; and from the active component, a Defense CBRN Response Force and two Command-and-Control CBRN Response Elements.1
In total, this force includes more than 18,500 military personnel prepared year-round to respond to terrorist incidents, natural disasters, or other catastrophic events. It offers a graduated level of support over time starting with basic technical advice and assistance within six hours of an incident, with additional military personnel and support capabilities arriving 12–96 hours later.
But in all that preparation, is the U.S. homeland-security community myopically focusing on weapon effects instead of those using the weapons?
Credible Threat Sources?
Many national-security analysts will tell you how dangerous nuclear weapons are and how detrimental the effects of a wide-scale smallpox outbreak would be. When one asks exactly who is going to perpetrate those acts and how likely is it that sub-state groups could gain the capability to perform a mass-casualty attack with CBRN weapons, the same analysts point to public statements from terrorist leaders, but not actual terrorist capabilities. Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation notes that after 9/11, “no terrorist scheme could be dismissed. Nuclear terrorism ascended [from being far-fetched] to a clear and present danger.”2 In congressional testimony, Jenkins stated:
Al Qaeda’s central leadership clearly had nuclear ambitions and made an effort to acquire fissile material and technical expertise. However, there is no evidence that they acquired or even came close to acquiring nuclear weapons, and at some point in the last decade, the organization’s nuclear weapons project turned from an acquisition effort to a propaganda program calculated to excite its followers and frighten its foes.
. . . The 9/11 attacks, however, left deep psychological scars and continue to have an insidious effect on analysis of the terrorist threat. The United States has adopted the debilitating habit of catastrophizing every terrorist threat. Terrorism analysts fear failure of imagination more than they fear causing unnecessary alarm. Competition for limited resources, especially in the current fiscal environment, encourages exaggeration of favored threats. And it is difficult to mobilize popular and political support for action without a worst-case scenario.3
Nuclear weapons have significant effects—including massive heat and blast, prompt gamma radiation, and electromagnetic pulse—that would devastate a metropolitan city. There are simple computer programs to show how much of a city would be destroyed by various nuclear weapons, but this does not mean that the actual capability exists outside of nation-state arsenals. Strict controls on fissile material have effectively limited the possible loss and reuse of that material in an improvised nuclear device (IND). Nuclear-weapon states are not neglecting the security of their nuclear stockpiles; a “loose nuke” could be tracked to them or even used against them by their own internal enemies.
One might wonder about the self-limiting parameter of a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon—why not 20 kilotons? Why not 100 kilotons? Why not one kiloton? Conventional wisdom is that an IND using the least amount of fissile material required to cause a nuclear explosion would result in a 10-kiloton blast, not that an IND is the most likely weapon to be used in a nuclear incident. This also assumes that a terrorist group will successfully build a functional IND and that it will not “fizzle.” This scenario, in fact, ignores the “loose-nuke” challenge, where a nation-state might sell, give, or lose a military nuclear weapon to a terrorist group. If larger nuclear bombs were considered, the requisite number of personnel and additional resources required to respond to such an incident would be unmanageable.
Bio-Phobia
Similarly, the threat of biological weapons has been inflated largely due to two significant incidents. The first was the Amerithrax letters, where a government scientist mailed anthrax-filled letters to the media and Congress in 2001. The second was the national concern over pandemic outbreaks of avian and swine flu in 2005 and 2009. Although deliberate biological attacks and biological-disease outbreaks are two very different and complex issues due to the source (Mother Nature versus terrorist groups), senior leaders within the U.S. government and the public-health community have decided that these challenges require a common policy approach.
Yet there is a great deal of skill and knowledge required to develop and employ a biological-warfare agent. One has to get the right strain of disease pathogen, handle it correctly to avoid killing the organisms, grow it in a way that will result in a lethal strain, store it and scale it up to create a significant quantity, and know how to disseminate it correctly.4 These are not trivial issues. Nation-states have spent billions of dollars and decades on developing biological-warfare agents, while sub-state groups have routinely failed to do so. And yet we’re told, as a result of the increased availability of information on biotechnology and advances in the life sciences as far as cost and availability of lab equipment, it’s only a question of when, not if, a biological attack occurs.
Chemical-warfare agents represent the oldest form of unconventional weapons and have the most available literature for developing them. It is ironic, then, how many security analysts and senior officials believe that chemical weapons do not represent a significant homefront mass-casualty threat. However, Aum Shinrikyo’s nerve-agent attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 basically initiated the DOD Domestic Preparedness Program. And the idea that Syria’s chemical weapons might fall into the hands of al Qaeda has senior officials in the United States and abroad quite concerned, as recent events have so clearly shown.
Over the last 35-plus years, there have been a total of three significant CBRN terrorist incidents: the Rajneeshee Cult salmonella incident in 1984, the previously mentioned Aum Shinrikyo incident, and the 2001 Amerithrax incidents. Only one of these was a mass-casualty event. Terrorist groups are not getting military-grade nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons to cause high numbers of casualties. At best, they might procure a few drums of industrial chemicals, manufacture a few grams of biological toxin, or steal some radioactive waste.5 Instead, successful terrorist groups are using commercial explosives, handguns, and military small arms in small-scale, single events at best, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombing, the 2005 London Underground bombing, and the 2008 Mumbai incident. This is contrary to the popular assumption that the U.S. government should expect terrorists to conduct “complex, geographically dispersed attacks . . . causing mass panic or catastrophic loss of life.”6
Roles and Missions
Homeland security is a team sport. The 2010 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report describes a “national enterprise” that refers to the collective efforts and shared responsibilities of federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, nongovernmental, and private-sector partners.7 The National Response Framework, and before that, the Federal Response Plan, defines the roles and responsibilities for the executive agencies that would support a federal response to state/local requests for assistance. When it comes to disaster preparedness and response in accidents and incidents that occur outside of DOD jurisdiction, DOD is in support to the lead federal agency. The DOD Strategy for Homeland Security and Civil Support calls for support to domestic consequence-management missions as well as preparing military installations for CBRNE attacks. Finally, Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8), National Preparedness, defines response as “those capabilities necessary to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs after an incident has occurred.”8
Within the United States, the Department of Justice has jurisdiction in responding to a terrorist event. The intelligence community identifies and tracks terrorists and their activities across the globe. The State Department works with other nations to coordinate actions to decrease support for terrorist groups. The Department of Energy focuses on preventing the illicit acquisition of special nuclear material. The Department of Homeland Security supports border-control activities as well as response and recovery. The DOD has plans to interdict shipments of CBRN materials in addition to providing defense support to civil authorities. There are literally billions of dollars spent each year on federal activities associated with prevention against, protection from, and response to CBRN terrorism.9
So when is enough truly enough? In 1998, when the concept for placing a 22-person WMD CST in each state was proposed, additional military support was limited to a small Army technical-escort unit and the Marine Corps’ Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force, neither of which could arrive at an incident scene in less than six hours. The CSTs had technical “advise-and-assist” roles and were initially criticized as a waste of federal funds—but only prior to 9/11.10 In 2004, the National Guard proposed 12 (and later, 17) CERF-Ps, each sized at 170–185 personnel, to arrive after the WMD CSTs but before the larger federal response. The CERF-Ps were distributed one per FEMA region, with the additional seven providing more capability to “[mitigate] risk associated with military force generation models.”11
At the same time as the CERF-P concept was proposed, DOD leaders examined the idea of establishing three CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces (CCMRFs), each sized at 4,500–5,000 active-duty personnel. DOD policy makers decided that they had to plan to respond with lifesaving capabilities to up to three multiple catastrophic incidents within 24–96 hours, therefore three deployable units were needed. Although the concept was developed in 2004–2005, the first CCMRF stood up in October 2008, with the two other CCMRFs to be developed in 2009–2010.12 This concept collapsed when it became clear that the active force could not sustain such a construct, given commitments to overseas conflicts. The Obama administration revived the concept with slightly lower personnel strengths as the DCRF and two Army CBRN elements, even as the National Guard proposed its ten HRFs to back up the CERF-Ps with a similar 6–12 hours’ response time.
We now have approximately 10,000 Title 32 forces and 8,500 Title 10 forces waiting for the alarm to sound—except that there hasn’t been a domestic CBRN incident for over a decade, let alone an event requiring this level of response. As a result of generous DHS grants, states have developed response capabilities that equal or exceed DOD resources, and that can arrive at the scene much more quickly.13 Not evaluating the “whole-of-government” effort to prepare for and respond to domestic CBRN incidents has resulted in a massive DOD response capability in a time when defense resources are projected to decrease and defense requirements continue to rise.
The Need for Risk Management
In 2008, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff spoke about the need for risk management. “Managing risk is not about looking backward at something that’s already happened, although that can be useful in terms of what we do going forward,” he said. “Managing risk is fundamentally looking ahead” to potential catastrophic events and figuring out how to prevent them altogether or at least reduce their impact.14 This is not a new principle to DOD and in particular, to military-installation commanders. They routinely conduct threat-and-vulnerability analyses, determine the consequences of violent incidents, identify measures to mitigate those threats, determine what their budgets can address, take steps to implement protective measures, and evaluate their readiness. While a military installation might be vulnerable to a CBRN hazard, it has to address more probable threats from lone gunmen, criminal elements, and foreign spies.
Similarly, the cost of maintaining a massive “CBRN Response Enterprise” needs to be measured against the very low probability that a terrorist group would attack any major U.S. city with the intent to cause mass casualties through the use of CBRN materials. That estimate needs to include the already significant investment in preventive efforts being conducted by other federal, state, and local agencies. Although we cannot state that CBRN attacks will never happen, conversely, it is not correct to assume that they are a certainty. There needs to be a balance between the low possibility/high consequence of CBRN terrorism and enacted security measures. If the goal is to ensure zero CBRN incidents or zero casualties, then the amount of security required will be significant.
We also need to manage expectations of this response force. In a no-notice CBRN incident, DOD response elements should not focus on lifesaving measures. They will not be quick enough in the event of chemical or radiological incidents, and the public-health community will handle biological incidents. When these DOD response elements are pre-deployed to high-profile events such as political rallies, national celebrations such as New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July, or international venues such as the Olympics, they can be of great value—if there’s a real CBRN threat, and to date, there hasn’t been evidence of one.
If the DOD had to start from scratch today, it is unlikely that it would create the current structure with its high cost of operations against an improbable threat. The burden on military-response forces to get to an incident in time to conduct lifesaving measures is significant. The state and local responders appropriately focus on the “golden hour” when such measures take place—they have the experience and the equipment to do so. As seen in their responses to natural disasters, DOD forces are very successful in rapidly providing medical care, engineering, search-and-rescue, and logistics to civil authorities. The active-component mission should support the rapid restoration of essential government services after a realistic CBRN incident—where DOD support would truly add value.
This is a policy issue for Congress and a continuing mission for the DOD. It may be that Congress does not want to take that risk, that it is comfortable with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year to sustain the 18,500-plus DOD response force, in addition to the billions spent by other federal agencies to protect the homeland. Homeland security is and will remain a top priority, if not the top priority, for DOD. But it’s not 2001 anymore; there is a larger “whole-of-government” effort in place. The CBRN Response Enterprise could be reduced to the 57 WMD CSTs and the 10 HRFs, plus the Marine Corps’ CBIRF, the Army’s 20th Support Command (CBRNE), and other active-duty units as available. Perhaps the CSTs could be “all-hazard” qualified to be more useful, and if the CERF-Ps were cut, the HRFs could get more resources to move more quickly. The active-component contribution needs to be weighed against the demands of overseas deployments. Bottom line, we need to reassess this policy and determine whether this huge force is still warranted.
1. U.S. Army fact sheet, www.arng.army.mil/SiteCollectionDocuments/Publications/News%20Media%20Factsheets/CST%20fact%20Sheet.pdf. DOD fact sheet, www.defense.gov/news/d20100603CERFPs.pdf. www.defense.gov/news/d20100603CERFPs.pdf. DOD fact sheet, www.defense.gov/news/d20100603HRF.pdf.
2. Brian Michael Jenkins, “Have We Succumbed to Nuclear Terror?” in Brian Michael Jenkins and John Paul Godges, eds., The Long Shadow of 9/11: America’s Response to Terrorism, (Washington, DC: RAND, 2011), 89.
3. Brian Michael Jenkins, “New Challenges to U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts: An Assessment of the Current Terrorist Threat,” testimony presented to the Senate on 11 July 2012, www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/the-future-of-homeland-security-evolving-and-emerging-threats.
4. Milton Leitenberg, Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005), 46.
5. Small-scale Terrorist Attacks Using Chemical and Biological Agents: An Assessment Framework and Preliminary Comparisons (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2004), 35–43; www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32391.pdf.
6. Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2005), 7.
7. Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report, (Washington, DC, Department of Homeland Security, 2010), 12.
8. PPD-8 can be found at www.dhs.gov/presidental-policy-directive-8-national-preparedness.
9. Al Mauroni, “Nuclear Terrorism: Are We Prepared?” Homeland Security Affairs, June 2012, www.hsaj.org/?article=8.1.9.
10. Amy Smithson and Leslie-Anne Levy, Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the U.S. Response (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2005), www.stimson.org/books-reports/ataxia-the-chemical-and-biological-terrorism-threat-and-the-us-response/.
11. U.S. Army fact sheet, www.army.mil/aps/09/information_papers/national_guard_chemical_biological.html.
12. Homeland Defense: Planning, Resourcing, and Training Issues Challenge DOD’s Response to Domestic (CBRNE) Incidents (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2005), www.gao.gov/new.items/d10123.pdf.
13. For example, see the WMD Strike Teams listed as regional assets within Texas: www.capcog.org/divisions/homeland-security/regional-preparedness/.
14. Knowledge@Wharton, “Chertoff on the Government’s Role in Managing Risk—Both Natural and Man-made,” 20 November 2008, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2096.