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Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army

By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Sep 8, 2008 6:15:06 EDT

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”

The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.

Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.

Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.

“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.

Other branches included

The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.

Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.

A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.

In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.

There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.

“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

© 2008, Army Times Publishing Company (emphasis added)

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

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Consequence Management Response Force to join Army Northern Command


At Great Lake Naval Station, Ill., CCMRF forces look over compound detecting gear while training to respond to a chemical attack.
Photo by U.S. Navy
September 15, 2008
[AND DO SEE THE LARGER VERSION OF THIS IMAGE AT http://www.army.mil/-images/2008/09/15/22164/army.mil-2008-09-16-083334.jpg ]

BY Army News Service
Sep 15, 2008
Last updated Tuesday 16 September, 2008 08:34 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- As America remembers the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, more than 800 members of a joint response force are preparing for their new mission of responding to CBRNE, or chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive incidents.

Elements of the force, known as the CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF, assembled at Fort Stewart, Ga., Sept. 8-19 for a command post exercise called Vibrant Response.

Three brigades form the core of the force: the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart; the 1st Medical Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas; and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, N.C.

The response force will be assigned on Oct. 1 to U.S. Northern Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and placed under the operational control of U.S. Army North, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

This week, Col. Lou Vogler, U.S. Army North's chief of future operations, and Marine Corps Lt. Col. James Shores, director of plans and policy for Joint Task Force Civil Support, participated in a round table interview with online journalists to discuss the force, including its unique mission and training.

"U.S. Army North is the Army component of U.S. Northern Command," said Vogler, "and we're charged with coordinating the federal military response in the land domain for domestic operations or disasters, to include CBRNE."

Vogler said that the response force is a scalable, dedicated force that is prepared to reinforce state and local responders when they request federal assistance. The force's alignment under U.S. NORTHCOM shortens the line of command to increase readiness and responsiveness.

Training is a key element of readying the force for its mission, and Vibrant Response offers the opportunity to train in a realistic scenario before a crisis or incident occurs.

During the exercise, commanders and staff of the force will train, rehearse and exercise - from academic classes to making decisions and executing orders - all to help prepare them for the mission they will assume on Oct. 1, said Vogler.

"It's an opportunity for network building in an unprecedented assignment of forces," said Shores. "DOD always had allocated contingency sourced forces - but this is precedent-setting network building with the forces that we ultimately will go out and execute with. It's an opportunity to get to know our forces, to see them in execution, to mission-orient them and be that much better - to be that much more responsive."

One goal of the exercise is to exercise with partners from the civilian agencies they would support. To that end, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other interagency representatives are participating to ensure integration with civilian consequence managers who would lead a response, said Vogler.

"The overall federal response builds on the local and state response in accordance with the incident command system and existing plans and processes that are out there," said Vogler. "The response force would supplement local efforts."

The training allows planners and leaders to test and improve upon procedures from previous exercises and training.

When asked how responders were working to eliminate the communications difficulties of 9/11, Shores said that frequency management planning is a part of that training effort, and those issues are a part of the planning process.

Both Vogler and Shores reiterated the importance of training and planning to the success of the response force.

"We at Army North as the joint force land component command of NORTHCOM, and Joint Task Force Civil Support, as the standing CBRNE response headquarters, take this mission very seriously," said Vogler. "The assignment of the CCMRF just makes us that much more prepared in terms of having standing relationships and an ability to train with a specific force full-time, under the control of NORTHCOM, to ensure we are ready to respond. The force has always been in place, but now the relationships are closer than ever."

"This type of planning and coordination and training is a priority both in our headquarters and at NORTHCOM, as we understand our responsibilities to be ready should the requirement arise, God forbid," said Vogler.

Copyright 2008 Army News Service (emphasis added)

http://www.army.mil/-news/2008/09/15/12422-consequence-management-response-force-to-join-army-northern-command/

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