Deep C Diving
fixed facilities: one in Sao Paulo and one in Rio. For those two there will be a company and an intention to grow each into a CBRN Battalion. Inside the Fleet Marine Force, also in the 1st Brazilian Fleet in Rio, we will have a platoon-sized, quick response force. For the other districts we will place a detachment, i.e., a flexible organisation that we can adjust to the size we need for a given area. We are trying to develop this kind of organisation in accordance with the major events that we will have in Brazil, and this year we are planning the size of the detachment and procuring the equipment for the detachments.”
The areas that need to be covered in Brazil can be huge – and vary from the vastly over-populated to the nearly deserted (in terms of human habitation at least!). The challenges of mobility will differ greatly, from the (frankly terrible) traffic in Rio through to the vast expanse needed to be covered in Amazonia. What mobility solutions are going to be put in place to deal with this situation? Captain Corrêa suggested that this was the very reason that the Marines had been chosen by the Navy to run CBRN: “That is why the Marines are the best”, he said, “we are the quick response force with Fleet Marine. It is our vocational nature to be expeditionary. It is easy to deploy the platoon from Rio to anywhere else in Brazil – travelling by ship or air.” Commander Ludovico Velloso, Head of the Materiel Department within the Marine Corps Headquarters agreed, but suggested that the deployability was aimed purely at Brazil: “Our capability is for force protection, it is not designed for going abroad. Our intention for the future however, is to grow this capability to do humanitarian aid if needed. First we must prepare for providing assistance inside Brazil. We are in charge of facility security inside naval infrastructure, and CBRN is an important part of that. All the Quick Reaction Forces are supposed to
BtlOpRib Manaus GptFN Belém
L-R, Santos, Correa and Velloso, the team behind the new Marine CBRN defence capability ©CBRNe World
GptFNNa GptFNB GptFNSa GptFNLa
CiaDefQBN ARAMAR
GptFNRG Planned CBRN Marine detachments ©Brazilian Marines
FFE – CGCFN GptFNRJ
respond to local incidents as requested, and now they are being prepared to respond to CBRN incidents.” At least chemical and radiological incidents, like Christmas crackers, usually come with a bang. That is not likely to be the case with bio incidents. Indeed, it would be difficult (short of people wandering around with sprayers) to see situations when it would be obvious that this was a terrorist release, rather than a naturally occurring pathogen. With some of the detachments in the Amazon one does have to wonder what stock of assays they would need (‘Well, it is killing people, but it is not one of the ‘Dirty Dozen’, so our work here is done!’), especially as some of the agents that might come into contact might not be so much esoteric as unknown (and I don’t even want to talk about background!). Commander Velloso admitted that it was going to be difficult, and that they still had a lot to do to solve the problem. Captain Corrêa stated that one of the steps in solving this problem would be to partner with other agencies that had far more experience. “Yesterday we had lunch with people from FioCruz [Foundation Oswaldo Cruz, a think tank attached to the Brazilian Ministry of Health and the most prominent science and technology health institution in Latin America Ed.] and they have complete coverage of the Brazilian territories, so they can be present anywhere in Brazil to do the identification and detection of agents that we need to present a vaccine against.” While they will partner with FioCruz, they are also in the early stages of purchasing their own capability for bio- detection. Captain Antonio dos Santos, the CBRNE Material Manager within the Marines Material Command stated: “We will also be buying a BSL3 laboratory next year and have plans for both a fixed and mobile version.” It is not just the labs, the Marines are looking at an ambitious portable bio-detection and identification program. It is their big driver within detection, identification and monitoring. In reality, the work that the Marines have to do is enormous, and whilst there are many local assets that they can ask for assistance, such as the Army’s CTEX, they will
CBRNe South America 2012, 13-14 March, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. More information on
www.icbrnevents.com 12 CBRNe WORLD February 2012
www.cbrneworld.com
CBRNeWORLD
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