We had a German decon platoon in


Exercise Dragon Fire [See CBRNe World Feb 2017. Ed.] in WA state. It was the first time a Stryker company had gone through thorough decon from start to finish and we did so using the German system, which impressed everyone. The company had never experienced that level of intensive training and understanding of what’s required for thorough decon. When they walked out it wasn’t the mythical elephant they assumed it to be, but something manageable that they can do and won’t degrade their follow-on capability, so they walked out confident. I can’t do that today on the US side. I will reach out every single time if I need thorough decon, begging for our German partners to come and join us as I know they have a much better capability than I have.


GW: Does that mean there will be more Dragon Fire? Could you see yourself doing it outside the US, even if only in Canada, or perhaps somewhere else? WK: We do other exercises outside the US. Precise Response is kicking off in July in Canada with about 11 nations participating, it is not as if we are not exercising outside the US. In Dragon Fire we took advantage of the US training infrastructure, starting off in Yakima training centre in WA state. We then went down to Umatilla, which involved some serious legs between targets, in one case 220miles. This meant planning from one target to the next: convoy, resupply, recovery, what happens when you find a sample, or people involved in the exploitation, how do you move them from the target to a base where you can do full exploitation? That was a huge success, we had five nations come out and observe and two have already jumped on board and asked when we are going to do the next one – which is planned for July/August 2018.


GW: Even if on a far smaller level, can you see yourself involved in Nato response force (NRF) rotations? WK: The US has committed to being part of the Framework Nations Concept [See CBRNe World Feb 2017. Ed.]. I do not want to get ahead of the Office of Secretary of Defence (OSD) and the


Department of Defense (DoD), but I think it possible that we will put a company into that framework. I know that the US can’t always be the lead, Nato countries need to take the lead while US forces support or reinforce. We do a lot of combined training, including Iron Mask, Precise Response and smaller exercises, and we want to participate, as we see it as a readiness opportunity. We don’t want to be the lead as that needs to be a European capability that we augment. We have also reached out to those


same nations as we continue to train and prepare for operations in the Pacific. We have brought in the Australians, UK and Canada as part of our training team for what we would do if operating in the Korean peninsula. We have started looking at other places and how we bring our partners with us. The US does not have the full capability or capacity to act alone and unafraid, we have to work as a coalition. We need to know what the others can and can’t do, they are not going to mimic us, and nor do we want them to. We want them to use what they can do and specialise from their perspective, and then we can capitalise on each other’s unique capabilities.


GW: In terms of your sensitive site exploitation work is that expanding, or is just another mission among many? WK: That is where we now focus. Whereas we used to be heavy on decon, we converted our decon companies to hazardous response companies and hazard assessment platoons. We have prioritised recce, surveillance and characterisation of target sets, whether they are home-made explosives (HME), narcotics, or small scale CW or BW labs. Often it is only the precursors and mechanics that are tweaked, so we focus on the technical aspects, on what soldiers see and how they interpret that against what the threat is actually doing.


GW: Is that now an accredited module for the soldiers? WK: Yes, our training and doctrine command (TRACDOC) schools are now running hazardous awareness and the HAZWOPER courses as well as the


technician courses. We are sending warrant officers off to be technician certified on hazardous preparedness, which has OCONUS value but is also applicable for the homeland and providing the federal response required by our local partners. We are seeing synergy between


industrial chemistry and chemical warfare defence. A lot of the databases are merging as we improve the science and understanding of what precursors and properties are needed to make CWA – what we call upstream defeat. If I only chase the warfare agent I have given the threat the momentum to build the agent. If I can train soldiers to chase signatures and understand the process for building the agent, they can look upstream and find precursor materials and the instrumentation associated with them, the unique signatures that may allow someone to build a CW. Then they can take it down before it gets produced.


GW: You’ve mentioned special forces before and with their training mission they have come under CW attack. As the COCOMs look at US soldiers coming under chemical attack do you see them ask what solution you might have and how they can have more of it? WK: Yes, we are doing that as we assist special forces but also the state department. They have the lead on building partner capacity outside the US, and we are meeting numerous requests with advisory teams and theatre security cooperation teams, not just in the Middle East but Africa as well. Today I have teams in four different African countries, under theatre security cooperation, hoping to train local force capability. Sometimes this is a general forces capability, sometimes special forces like mine, to make sure we understand TTPs, so we can help reduce the availability of precursor material. In the African example this is counter improvised explosive devices (IED), looking at old minefields. We are helping humanitarian de-mining authorities to deal with remnant minefields so they don’t become sources of material for insurgency efforts within their own borders.


www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017


June 2017 CBRNe WORLD


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CBRNeWORLD


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