Army Chemical Review

SUMMER 2013

Army Chemical Review presents professional information about Chemical Corps functions related to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, smoke, flame, and civil support operations.

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Efforts to deter or defeat weapons of mass destruction threats are known as counterproliferation—the second pillar of the National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency conducts a wide variety of mission support activities to defeat weapons of mass destruction threats. Research and development activities result in improvements to technologies that sense, detect, locate, and track weapons of mass destruction threats; the Defense Threat Reduction Agency helps integrate these improved technologies into battlefeld operations. In addition, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is directly involved in improving weapons of mass destruction detection, assessment, protection, and decontamination and in the hardening of mission command systems to protect against nuclear and radiation effects. Furthermore, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is involved in the safe, kinetic destruction of weapons of mass destruction agents while ensuring limited collateral damage. Through feld testing and modeling, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has improved its means of "defeating underground facilities that are often associated with [weapons of mass destruction] production, storage, delivery, and command and control."7 Counterproliferation efforts enable the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to further expand the building of partnership capacities. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency works closely with its allied partners, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and other agencies, conducting vulnerability assessments and providing force protection guidance. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency also supports the last pillar of the National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction—consequence management. The goals of the consequence management program are to reduce and mitigate the effects of weapons of mass destruction attacks. As a Department of Defense combat support agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency supports all major combatant commanders, primarily through the consequence management program. In 2011, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency began a new consequence management assistance program initiative to build partnership capabilities through engagement activities designed to help foreign nations build chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) defense programs. This support demonstrates the working relationships that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has with agencies across the Department of Defense and the U.S. government. Partnerships with the U.S. Northern Command and the U.S. Pacifc Command enable the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to participate in civil support missions in the event of a CBRNE attack on American soil. For example, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency recently deployed subject matter experts to Japan to aid in the consequence management of the compromised Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake incident. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency also partners with the U.S. Army and the Department of Energy to conduct postnuclear blast sample collections and analyses. And the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has built partnerships with a wide range of state governments (including Army National Guard weapons Summer 2013 of mass destruction–civil support teams, local authorities, and international customers to provide "[Weapons of mass destruction] effects predictions for exercises and real events."8 Its organization, capabilities, and unique mission set position the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to build partnerships with combatant commanders and to integrate its capabilities into unifed land operations. As directed in the National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, "The military must strive to expand and exercise combating [weapons of mass destruction] partnerships with a goal of creating partners that can provide for themselves and assist during coalition operations."9 This statement, along with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency defense support role to combatant commanders, set the conditions for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to build and maintain partnerships with all major commands across the world. As a result, the Department of Defense may be called upon to carry out one or all of the eight missions listed in the National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction: offensive operations, elimination operations, interdiction operations, active defense, passive defense, weapons of mass destruction consequence management, security cooperation and partnership activities, and threat reduction cooperation. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is capable of conducting the eight National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction missions as a deployable joint task force headquarters elimination force that functions in a mission command capacity, directing weapons of mass destruction elimination. The joint task force headquarters elimination force assists combatant commanders in conducting the eight mission sets during each of the six military operational phases (shape, deter, seize the initiative, dominate, stabilize, and enable civil authority).10 Defense Threat Reduction Agency organizations and capabilities are synonymously linked to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency mission statement, which states that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency "safeguards America and its allies from weapons of mass destruction (i.e., [CBRNE]) by providing capabilities to reduce, eliminate, and counter the threat and mitigate its effects."11 This mission statement is subordinate to that included in the National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, which states that it is the "[Department of Defense] mission to dissuade, deter, and defeat those who seek to harm the United States, its allies, and partners through [weapons of mass destruction] use or threat of use and, if attacked, to mitigate the effects and restore deterrence."12 The Defense Threat Reduction Agency mission statement effectively enables the agency to function in three main capacities—as a defense agency, as a combat support agency, and as a national asset for combating weapons of mass destruction. With these three operational "hats," the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is positioned to report directly to three distinct strategic chains of command. As a CBRNE defense agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for 11

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