Brigadier General William King IV, commanding general, 20th CBRNE
command, talks to Gwyn Winfield about working with combatant commanders (COCOMs), states and research agencies
The most respectable arguments
GW: I find it difficult to talk to any of the commanding generals (CG) of the 20th without mentioning the shift in aim point. Currently you would have to go back 30 years to find a time when chemical weapons (CW) were as normalised as they are now. Since you have to deal with the perennial shortage of manpower, budget and time, how do you, as CG, decide where, on the raft of possibilities, the aim point should be?
WK: We continue with what we started. We need to recognise and accept that the threat has changed in the past few years, especially since ISIL has put theory into practice through its chlorine and mustard attacks and other experimentation. What we focussed on when I came into the command was training leaders and soldiers to be warrior scientists: masters of shoot, move, communicate, medicate, sustain themselves and apply technical ability in
a combined arms environment to get after the threat itself. What you are talking about is the environment; is it homeland, or abroad, is it large scale, clandestine, or counter terrorist? Those are just changes in the environment, the base threat is still CBRN weapons and their associated explosives being used as a means of terror and harm towards people or prohibiting access to equipment or infrastructure. How we apply our skill sets might be slightly different in the homeland compared to a combat environment, but that is nuanced, the basic principles are the same.
GW: But does mass affect that? Look at what is happening in Ukraine with concerns over potential Nato operations, or how about the Korean peninsula? Once you impose that level of agent, as opposed to a few kilogrammes here or there, doesn’t that change it? WK: It does, in terms of scale and magnitude. Would I do things differently if I went after a country with a small
“They see me rollin, They hatin, Tryin to catch me ridin' dirty…” ©DoD
CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017
www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017 8 CBRNe WORLD June 2017
www.cbrneworld.com
CBRNeWORLD
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