By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 9, 2013 – A perfect storm of simulated disasters
is slowly unfolding across the United States, as thousands of military
and Defense Department members join their interagency partners in
fine-tuning their disaster-response processes just ahead of the upcoming
hurricane and wildfire seasons.
U.S. Northern Command has kicked off its annual Ardent Sentry
exercise, with plans to introduce increasingly complex scenarios in the
coming weeks, Joe Bonnet, the North American Aerospace Defense Command
and Northcom training and exercises director, told American Forces Press
Service.
Ardent Sentry is one of the dual commands’ three “Tier
1” exercises, designed to train the command headquarters and its
components for their mission of providing defense support of civil
authorities, on request, Bonnet explained.
The scenarios
challenge Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., the NORAD and Northcom
commander, and his staffs to monitor disasters or potential disasters,
anticipate requests for defense support that could augment civilian
first responders and posture the military to move quickly when the
taskings come down, he said.
“This is a really big exercise,”
Bonnet said. “The NORAD and Northcom headquarters and components play,
the National Guard plays, [U.S.] Strategic Command plays, and the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency plays.”
In addition, Federal
Emergency Management Agency Administrator W. Craig Fugate will lead
FEMA’s response, which will include participants from the FBI, Coast
Guard, Energy Department and other interagency partners, he said.
The exercise incorporates a command post exercise at the NORAD and
Northcom headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and at its
service component headquarters: U.S. Air Forces Northern at Tyndall Air
Force Base, Fla.; U.S. Army North at Fort Sam Houston, Texas; U.S.
Marine Forces Northern Command in New Orleans; and the newly established
Navy North, part of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
Ardent Sentry
2013 also includes field training exercises that extend from the waters
south of Alaska to the southern tip of Florida.
It kicked off May
6 with one of those first scenarios: a notional break-in at Malmstrom
Air Force Base, Mont., which compromised its nuclear weapons arsenal.
The 341st Missile Wing, part of 20th Air Force, which serves as U.S.
Strategic Command’s response task force, responded along with about 200
FBI agents to practice their procedures to recover and secure the stolen
weapons, Bonnet said.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard was busy
working with its Canadian counterparts, conducting a search-and-rescue
exercise in the waters north of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The
action will pick up next week, when the Northcom staff starts monitoring
a notional tropical depression in the Caribbean Sea that continues to
gain strength. Florida’s governor will ask the Defense Department to
deploy a dual-status commander able to command both “Title 32” National
Guard troops and “Title 10” active and reserve forces and a joint
supporting element in the event they are needed. South Carolina’s
civilian authorities soon will do the same as they begin their own
internal hurricane preparedness procedures.
As FEMA readies to
lead the responses and state governors mobilize their National Guards,
Northcom will work with its interagency partners to prepare for a
federal military response, if called to provide it, Bonnet said.
Northcom will coordinate with FEMA to pre-position equipment and
resources where they are likely to be needed, and, if requested, to help
to evacuate people from hospitals or nursing homes in low-lying areas
or others who need help escaping the hurricane’s path. It also will line
up dual-status commanders and their associated joint support elements
so they are ready to move out on a moment’s notice.
Then, a
succession of three notional hurricanes will strike. The first will
remain offshore as it screams up the coasts of Florida, Georgia and
South Carolina. The next, a Category 4 hurricane, will make landfall in
Melbourne, Fla., cutting across the state toward the Gulf of Mexico
before pummeling the Florida Panhandle. Just days later, a third
hurricane will approach Melbourne, but will veer out to sea.
In
addition to the anticipated flooding, power loss and related effects,
the string of hurricanes will set off a chain reaction of other
calamities, Bonnet said. A high-rise building will collapse and a train
will derail in Jacksonville, Fla. A tornado in Gainesville, Fla., will
disperse radiological elements. And in Tampa, a plane will hit a
chemical factory.
In addition to an estimated 1,000 Florida and
Georgia National Guardsmen and first responders from 53 Florida counties
and their federal counterparts, Northcom will respond to requests for
DOD support. A medical company deployed from Fort Bragg, N.C., and a
reserve engineer company from Tennessee will work alongside their
National Guard counterparts at the direction of the designated
dual-status commander.
As if this won’t be enough to stress the
staffs, a train will derail in the Rio Grande Valley. Army North will
collaborate with Mexican authorities, with U.S. and Mexican responders
providing support on their respective sides of the border.
Although Ardent Sentry is one of Northcom’s longest-running exercises,
the scenarios become increasingly complex each year, Bonnet said.
Next year’s exercise, already in the planning stages, is expected to be
the biggest ever. Bonnet envisions a series of earthquakes and
aftershocks that strike without notice, initially in Anchorage, Alaska,
then southerly along the Ring of Fire.
“This is going to be a
West Coast, no-notice, major, complex catastrophe,” he said, accompanied
by other fictional natural and manmade disasters that require military
support.
Exercises such as Ardent Sentry are the key to ensuring
the military has the procedures and decision-making processes in place
to support civil authorities as needed, Bonnet said. He noted, for
example, the vast difference in the military’s response to Hurricane
Katrina in 2005, and Hurricane Sandy last year.
“If you compare
them, the difference is the exercise and training program,” he said. “It
is really through exercising and training that you have built and
nurtured those trusted partnerships that are vital to working
effectively together in a crisis.”
And, “unless you work together
before the crisis,” Bonnet added, “you don’t have an opportunity to
build the relationships that allow you to do that.”
With
hurricane season to kick off June 1 and wildfires expected to increase
during the summer, Bonnet said, late spring is a perfect time to
fine-tune these procedures.
“This is our mission rehearsal for
the hurricane season,” he said, one that prepares DOD and its local,
state and federal partners to respond together.
“These are really
our trusted partners,” Bonnet said. “Exercising together ensures we
have all dusted off our manuals and our playbooks and refined our
procedures to make sure everybody is on the same wavelength and ready to
work together as required as we go into the hurricane and wildfire
seasons.”
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