Gwyn Winfield talks to the Corpo de Fuzileiros Navais, or Brazilian Marine Corps, about building their new CBRN capability
Deep C Diving F
or many forces, the development of a CBRN capability has been a gradual process. Some can trace theirs back to 1995 and the sarin incident in
Tokyo, but for others that origin is lost in the mist of the Cold War – or even prior to that. It is rare that you come across a force that dates the genesis of its CBRN defence force to the present day, but that is the case with the Brazilian Marines! As with many new arrivals there has to be a threat ‘mother’ and a capability ‘father’, and this case is no different. For the Marines, the capability father has been the expected arrival of the Brazilian Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet. It was announced in July 2011 that five submarines would be built by 2016, and this along with a specialised burns hospital and very small cadre of CBRN professionals is the capability push. The threat ‘mother’ has been the sudden realisation that Brazil might not have home- grown CBRN threats, but that foreign threats may soon be coming to their shores along with a raft of high-visibility events, from the Confederation Cup and FIFA World Cup to the Olympics. The decision to build nuclear submarines came from nowhere (a single defendable reason for which is hard to pin down), as did the genesis of the Marine CBRN forces. Captain Luiz Corrêa, Chief of Staff at the Brazilian Marine Corps headquarters explained the timing by saying, “Now is the time because a nuclear program for the navy is in place - not only for the navy, but for Brazil. We are looking at the Brazilian states to become a nuclear power, especially in submarines, so we have instigated a large nuclear subs program. The immediate concern was how we could protect the environment, the plants and the people as well – though not necessarily in that order! We started to think about introducing a system or program in the Navy to protect all these things. That is why we decided to get into CBRN matters. We have started in
While the big naval bases are in Rio and Sao Paulo, this incentive will receive countrywide deployment (see Map 1), with CBRN detachments at the many brownwater sites that the Marines and Navy have. Not all Marine detachments will have the same capability: those in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro will have a greater capacity than those in the interior, or those in smaller naval districts as Captain Corrêa explained: “We are planning to have two
the Marines because the General Commander of the Marines is a member of the Admiralty and the Navy, so it is easier to coordinate all the actions. For that reason we will be the first to have a CBRN platoon.” This initially seems to be a difficult proposition. If you are building a nuclear fleet then you need radiological specialists - especially health and safety specialists and monitors. Brazil already has a highly competent radiological response capability, due to the Goiânia tragedy in 1987, where a radiotherapy source was taken from a hospital illegally/ unknowingly, which resulted in the death of four and the contamination of nearly 250. It would seem that this radiological capability could be improved on, rather than adding a chemical and biological dimension. Captain Corrêa explained that it has more to do with overall force protection and less to do with specific threats: “As far as we are concerned, the problem comes all together. If you want to protect a facility then you can’t just think about radiological and nuclear threats, you need to think about all of them. That is why we decided it was important to be aware of any incident, accident or action against that facility.”
©CBRNe World
CBRNe South America 2012, 13-14 March, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. More information on
www.icbrnevents.com 10 CBRNe WORLD February 2012
www.cbrneworld.com
CBRNeWORLD
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