Bill Thomas, CBRN Section Chief of the US Air Force Emergency Services Branch and Chief Master Sergeant Claudette Watler-Hall, Air Force Emergency Management Career Field Manager at Tyndall AFB, tell Gwyn Winfield about the US Air Force’s CBRN capability
In Case of Emergency… S
ometimes life deals you cards that you don’t expect – and it is no surprise that this should happen in
Las Vegas! While at a social gathering at the DTRA Science and Technology Conference in November, I happened across Mr Thomas and the obvious thought hit me: ‘I know what the Navy, Army and Marines do in CBRN… but I have no idea what the Air Force does!’ This is, of course, only a half-truth: the USAF do enter my consciousness as a bit-player in other dramas, being one of the major exponents of standoff bio- detection for example, or as the final delivery system in counter-proliferation (boom!). So bumping into Bill seemed a heaven-sent (if such things ever happen in Vegas!) chance to find out more. The answer is, in short, quite a lot! Whilst they lack the mass that the US Army has, as well as the highly specialised CBRN skills of CBIRF, they instead choose to roll CBRN into base security, making it part of emergency management (EM) – as Mr Thomas explained: “Similar to our sister services, we work towards enabling our warfighters to survive and operate in traditional CBRN-threat environments. In doing so, we project much of our warfighting capability from our installations and have adopted a ‘fight from base’ mentality to ensure that we can sustain operational and support functions for our critical missions. Through the years, we have developed our approach, beyond just the warfighting lens, into an all-hazards threat response vision. Accordingly, our installations are organised, trained and equipped to provide initial response capability for hazardous material incidents, terrorist attacks, and other major accidents, while still maintaining warfighter defense capabilities for traditional wartime scenarios. A key enabler for providing this capability resides with our Readiness Emergency Management Flights.
According to Mike Connors, Air Force Emergency Manager, “The role of Air Force (civil engineer) Emergency Management Flights, as they relate to
CBRN response, is focused on consequence management and passive defense. Air Force emergency managers use a building block certification process for core competency training, as well as career development and progression. They begin as apprentice level CBRN Responders, and gradually progress through a skill-level, development process to become Certified Emergency Managers, who are adept at planning for and managing all- hazard protection and resilience.” In many respects, this suggests that CBRN forms the basic building block of the responder’s career, i.e., that they get a background in it, then specialise and move away from it. Chief Master Sergeant (CMSgt) Watler-Hall disagreed, saying responders are required to annually refresh their CBRN training and move towards a higher qualification: “Part of what we learn on the first day as an apprentice” she said, “is to do SSE [sensitive site exploitation] and assessment. As you do advanced training – the craftsman next level of certification – you have to do more in-depth SSE, and you have to build a plan that will govern the response that you are going on. We build on it from Apprentice, to Craftsman to Advanced – until you are a Senior Leader in that flight or community.” The USAF’s passive defense role is also focused on sustaining military capability, as well as protecting people and missions during combat operations, whilst preserving personnel and restoring mission capability immediately following combat operations or other incidents. The whole issue of combat operations raises interesting questions. As opposed to other forces, which tend to have a large footprint such as the US Army, the US Air Force is more often self-sustained and working out of a small airstrip in a country of dubious security. The airbases for much of the early stages of operations in Afghanistan, for example, were in the Central Asian ‘Stans’ such as Uzbekistan. That has to be compared with a base in Italy or the UK, where the level of common understanding, language and
TTPs will be very different. CMSgt Watler- Hall agreed: “Working in an overseas environment is a challenge for us because, depending on which country we are in, different rules will dictate how we are able to respond – if anything happens on the perimeter line, or even off, our installation. These rules could dictate something as simple as trying to get a sample on base to check it, or vice versa. In the USAFE [US Air Forces in Europe] we had challenges in whether we could respond to an incident a certain distance from the installation, as local responders would do it themselves and bring us in if they needed us. Even in Afghanistan it would a challenge for us, without set standards and agreement, as we are going into their domain.”
It is not just the OCONUS bases that provide support to local communities: the USAF will also offer support to the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in local jurisdictions. If there is an incident, this is often achieved via the mechanism of a mutual aid agreement with the local authorities. When you consider military aid to a civil power (MACP) and the US, it is hard to get away from the role of the civil support teams (CSTs) – an element of the National Guard. It is not just the US Army that has reservists, since there is also the Air Force National Guard too, so is there a USAF version of the CST? “Within the Air Force, and in each state, we have guard assets that are assigned to each state and belong to the governor, although we can use them if we need to,” stated CMSgt Watler-Hall, “Some of the guard assets are aligned on bases with CSTs and they work with them, but they are not a CST unto themselves. [The major difference is] size: within the guard the flights are smaller, whereas CSTs tend to be bigger teams and within the CST you are somewhat specialised. They each have tasks, whereas for us, as emergency managers, we have to be able to do everything: take the sample, run the sample, and manage the EOC - all at one time.”
CBRNe South America 2012, 13-14 March, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. More information on
www.icbrnevents.com 16 CBRNe WORLD February 2012
www.cbrneworld.com
CBRNeWORLD
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