
Last Friday, the U.S. Army’s Bloggers Roundtable featured an interview with Army
Major General John Basilica, commanding general of Task Force 51 (also known as the second
CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force or CCMRF) and Navy Captain Mike Collins, Chief of Staff of the
Joint Task Force for Civil Support (JTF-CS), which currently oversees the first CCMRF. The first CCMRF is composed of active duty forces, while the second one is a mix of Army Reserve and Army/Air Force National Guard units. A third CCMRF is planned for 2011.
I was unable to participate in the discussion,
but the talkradio version is available here. The discussion was more of a status of the CCMRF development, with the two gentlemen noting their units’ development and their mission to respond in support of lead federal agencies. For some reason, the military is paralleling software coding to identify their units and their evolution, using the year of creation and the unit designation (CCMRFs 1, 2 or 3). The first CCMRF is designated 9.1, but next year it will receive “additional capability” and be upgraded to 10.1. Basilica’s force will be version 10.2, and the third CCMRF will be version 11.3.
In response to a question as to the CCMRF’s focus and interaction with other National Guard functions, CAPT Collins noted that they don’t do forest fires or natural disasters. In relation to the ricin incident in Las Vegas last year, he observed that the state never called for federal assistance because it was such a small incident, so there was no need to deploy. It would only be if the state was overwhelmed by the incident and had to call on federal assistance that the CCMRFs would roll, such as the case of a terrorist 10-kiloton nuclear explosion in a US city.
Yes, he had to go there. He opined that the entire nation would probably respond to a terrorist nuke scenario, and given that kind of massive response, the CCMRF would certainly be part of that response – again, in support of some other federal agency. He stressed that a lot, probably because of the “mischaracterization” of the CCMRF’s role and intentions by bloggers in the past year. If I had to guess, I’d say that Collins hasn’t done this kind of mission before, because he too easily falls into the rhetorical lines: “God forbid a terrorist nuke were to ever happen, but if it does, we certainly need to respond with this kind of a capability.” Ease up there, captain.
MG Basilica was more pragmatic, talking about the composition of his force and the command post exercise that his group is planning for August. In this exercise, his unit will have about 400-500 people involved in a week-long drill focusing on communications and interagency coordination. Given the composition of the CCMRF, it’s important that the staff understand the unit’s mission and capabilities. He expects the second CCMRF to be tested and declared operationally ready by October of this year. He was very serious about communicating the intent to develop this force to “be as ready as we can be.”
And that’s really what this call was about. It was to reinforce the message that the DoD has a defined mission, that it was not stepping over the posse comatitus line, and that it was on track to develop this capability. It was not to rationalize why the previous administration thought they needed three units with a combined strength of 15,000 persons to handle up to three nearly simultaneous terrorist mass casualty events, or why this current administration hasn’t slapped this concept down as ridiculous and wasteful. It was not to discuss the near-impossibility of the second CCMRF’s capability to organize and deploy in a timely fashion to any spot in the country in response to a no-notice event, considering its make-up of Reserve and National Guard units (although I could see them supporting national security special events). It wasn’t to point out that the overwhelming majority of CBRNE incidents within the United States will not require the CCMRFs to deploy at all, and in all likelihood, they’re going to be very bored people.
On the positive side, neither man said “it’s not a question of if, but when.” Maybe they’ve recognized that statement has exceeded its life expectancy as a useful phrase.
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