Colorado Springs – The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States.
The plans envision 15 potential crisis situations and anticipate several simultaneous strikes across the country, according to officers who drafted them.
The classified plans, developed at Peterson Air Force Base, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces, perhaps as many as 3,000 ground troops for each attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.
The possible situations range from “low end,” relatively modest crowd-control missions, to “high-end,” full-scale disaster management after catastrophic attacks such as the release of a deadly biological agent or the explosion of a radiological device, several officers said.
Some of the worst-case situations involve three attacks at the same time, in keeping with a Pentagon directive this year ordering Northcom, as the command is called, to plan for multiple simultaneous attacks.
The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement.
Defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.
But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.
“In my estimation, (in the event of) a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned – of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved – to take the lead,” said Adm. Timothy Keating, the head of Northcom, which coordinates military involvement in homeland security operations.
The plans present the Pentagon with a clearer idea of the kinds and numbers of troops and the training that might be required to build a homeland defense force. They come at a time when senior Pentagon officials are engaged in an internal, year-long review of troop levels and weapons systems, attempting to balance the heightened requirements of homeland defense against the heavy demands of overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Keating expressed confidence that existing forces are sufficient to meet homeland security needs. Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, Northcom’s chief operations officer, agreed, but he added that “stress points” in some military capabilities probably would result if troops were called on to deal with multiple homeland attacks.
The command’s plans consist of two main documents. One, designated CONPLAN 2002 – CONPLAN is military lingo for “Concept plan” – is said to be an umbrella document that draws together previously issued orders for homeland missions and covers air, sea and land operations.
It addresses not only post- attack responses but also prevention and deterrence actions aimed at intercepting threats before they reach the United States.
The other, identified as CONPLAN 0500, deals specifically with managing the consequences of attacks represented by the 15 possible situations and is undergoing final drafting in Colorado Springs.
Since Northcom’s inception in October 2002, its headquarters staff has grown to about 640 members, making it larger than the Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America, but smaller than the regional commands for Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific.
Pentagon authorities have rejected the idea of creating large standing units dedicated to homeland missions. Instead, they favor a “dual use” approach, drawing on a common pool of troops trained both for homeland and overseas assignments.
Particular reliance is being placed on the National Guard, which is expanding a network of 22-member civil support teams to all states and forming about a dozen 120-member regional response units.
The Northcom commander can also quickly call on active- duty forces.
On top of previous powers to send fighter jets into the air, Keating this year gained the authority to dispatch Navy and Coast Guard ships to deal with suspected threats off U.S. coasts.
He has immediate access to four active-duty Army battalions based across the country, officers said.
When it comes to ground forces possibly taking a lead role in homeland operations, senior Northcom officers remain reluctant to discuss specifics.
Keating said such situations, if they arise, probably would be temporary, with lead responsibility passing back to civilian authorities.
