The U.S. Northern Command—established in 2002 to prevent a repeat of
9/11—is seeking assistance from a wide range of organizations to help
it protect the United States, its territories and interests, said Army Col.
Stover James, the organization’s director of interagency coordination.
Among its growing list of partners are other military organizations; federal,
state, and local agencies; academia; and industry, he said.
The command has set up a joint interagency coordination group (JIACG), with
representatives from 46 defense and non-defense agencies, James told National
Defense. The group includes other military units, such as the U.S. Pacific,
Southern and Joint Forces Commands, as well as the National Guard and Coast
Guard.
Also in the mix are the State and Transportation Departments, Central Intelligence
Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
Army Corps of Engineers, Geological Survey and Sandia National Laboratories.
Working with civilian organizations was a new experience for James, whose primary
experience has been as an artillery officer. “The only federal agencies
I ever worked with before was the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal
Service,” he said.
Every combatant command has a JIACG, but it plays a particularly important
role at NORTHCOM, because so many civilian agencies are involved in homeland
security, James said. The command’s JIACG facilitates close and rapid
coordination, integration and information sharing between civilian and military
organizations, he said.
Every year, James said, JIACG helps coordinate two large-scale NORTHCOM exercises.
Dubbed “Determined Promise” and “Unified Defense,” these
exercises simulate air, maritime and port threats; consequence-management operations;
bio-terrorist attacks; weapons of mass destruction events; and natural disasters.
Participants, thus far, include officials from more than 57 state and federal
agencies and observers from Canada and Mexico.
NORTHCOM is the first combatant command to be assigned full-time responsibility
for homeland defense and military assistance to civilian authorities. It was
stood up in October 2002, and became fully operational a year later, following
an in-depth evaluation of the command’s capability to meet its responsibilities.
Its specific mission is to conduct operations to deter, prevent and defeat
threats and aggression aimed at the United States, its territories and interests
within the command’s assigned area of responsibility. Also, as directed
by the president or secretary of defense, it provides military assistance to
civil authorities, including consequence-management operations.
NORTHCOM’s area of operations includes all air, land and sea approaches
to the continental U.S., Alaska, Canada, Mexico and the surrounding water out
to approximately 500 nautical miles. It also includes the Gulf of Mexico, Puerto
Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The defense of Hawaii and U.S. territories
and possessions in the Pacific Ocean remain the responsibility of the U.S. Pacific
Command.
NORTHCOM plans, organizes, and executes homeland defense and civil support
missions, but has few permanently assigned forces, James explained. Its headquarters—at
Peterson Air Force Base, in Colorado Springs, Colo.—has about 500 civilians
and military personnel from all service branches.
Housed in a new, 158,000 square-foot building originally intended for the U.S.
Space Command, which also is based at Peterson, NORTHCOM also includes the following:
JFHQNCR got off to a quick start, James said. In January 2004, it provided
command and control of all military support to the State of the Union Address,
including security, emergency medical, chemical and biological response.
In February, it deployed 145 troops from the Marine Corps Chemical Biological
Incident Response Force to assist U.S. Capitol Police in dealing with suspected
ricin contamination in the Senate office complex.
The NORAD unit responsible for defending the airspace of the continental United
States is the First Air Force, headquartered at Tyndall Air Force Base, near
Panama City, Fla. It consists of 10 Air National Guard fighter wings and three
air defense sectors, and its primary weapons systems are the F-15 Eagle and
the F-16 Flying Falcon.
“Since the 9/11 attacks, NORAD has flown more 34,000 sorties and scrambled
or diverted fighters more than 1,700 times, in response to potential threats
all without a single mishap,” said Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, who
commands both NORTHCOM and NORAD.
NORTHCOM also has participated in other operations during the past year, Eberhart
told a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
In August, at the request of the National Interagency Fire Center—a cooperative
effort involving seven federal agencies and the National Association of State
Foresters—the command deployed to fight forest fires in Montana. The task
force included an Army battalion of more than 500 firefighters, a medical evacuation
helicopter and a defense coordination team at the center’s headquarters
at Boise, Idaho.
In September, the U.S. Secret Service and State Department requested help beefing
up security for the 58th United Nations General Assembly in New York City. NORTHCOM
provided more than 200 personnel, including a command and control element and
explosive ordnance specialists.
Also in September, the Federal Emergency Management Agency sought assistance
in dealing with Hurricane Isabel, which plowed through North Carolina, Virginia
and Maryland with winds in excess of 100 miles an hour. NORTHCOM deployed a
task force from the First Army at Forest Park, Ga., and provided defense coordinating
officers to the three states. Fort Bragg, N.C.; Pope Air Force Base, N.C., Fort
A.P. Hill, Va., and the Defense Supply Center Columbus, Ohio, were put to use
as mobilization, flight operations and emergency management storage centers.
In October, the command responded to another plea to assist with forest fires
in Southern California. NORTHCOM deployed eight C-130 aircraft equipped with
modular airborne fire fighting systems, six Marine Corps helicopters, a liaison
officer and a defense coordinating team.
NORTHCOM, meanwhile, is working to improve its relationship with the National
Guard Bureau, which coordinates operations of the 466,000 members of the Army
and Air National Guard. One proposal is to establish an information-sharing
network linking the Guard and other military commands.
The idea is to “capitalize on existing NGB computer connectivity throughout
the 54 states and territories,” Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the bureau,
told a congressional hearing. “If implemented, such a structure could
be an important link between [NORTHCOM, PACOM], the office of the assistant
secretary of defense, and other federal and state stake holders.”
In his congressional testimony, Air National Guard Maj. Gen. John A. Love,
an aide to Eberhart, listed these additional Guard initiatives to enhance NORTHCOM’s
ability to respond to national security threats:
Active-duty personnel, however, are in short supply because of deployments
to Afghanistan and Iraq, and Guard forces “would alleviate part of the
strain on the active-duty components,” Love said.
“We envision these units would act under Title 32 (state control) while
on alert and have ‘hip-pocket orders’ to convert to Title 10 status
(federal control), if required,” Love said.
NORTHCOM supports the Department of Homeland Security in protecting the nation’s
shoreline. The Coast Guard—now part of DHS—has primary responsibility
for U.S. maritime security.
The command “is tasked with identifying and intercepting maritime threats
as far from our shores as practical,” Eberhart said. “In cooperation
with interagency partners, we conduct maritime interception operations to degrade
and disrupt terrorist acts, collect intelligence and prevent attacks against
the United States and its allies.”
Several proposals have been made to expand NORTHCOM’s maritime operations.
Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, has suggested creation of a “maritime
NORAD,” consolidating responsibility for coastal defense within a single
command. The Defense Science Board has proposed expanding NORAD, as a North
American Defense Command, and assigning it to protect both the nation’s
skies and its coasts (related story p.18)
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, has ordered a study that will
explore whether NORTHCOM should be merged with SOUTHCOM, a move that would create
an Americas command. Headquartered in Miami, SOUTHCOM is responsible for all
U.S. military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean south of Mexico
and Cuba, encompassing 32 countries and about 14.5 million square miles of territory.
Proponents point out that SOUTHCOM already has moved most of its facilities
from Panama to U.S. soil. In addition, it is noted, the command’s primary
concerns currently are illegal immigration and cocaine smuggling, which are
issues for NORTHCOM, as well. The study, part of a routine review of the Unified
Command Plan review, is due this month.
NORTHCOM’s growth, thus far, has meant new opportunities for the business
and academic communities. In 2003, Swinerton Builders, of Arvada, Colo., won
a $22-million contract for expanding the command’s headquarters building
to include a battle management center and force-protection improvements.
Thales-Raytheon Systems, of Fullerton, Calif., landed a $22.3 million award
to provide NORAD and PACOM with an interoperable, open-architecture air-defense
command-and-control platform to support NORAD’s homeland-defense mission.
NORTHCOM and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs signed a memorandum
of understanding linking the command and the university’s network information
and space security center.
It is important for NORTHCOM to build relationships with the civilian community,
Eberhart told a 2003 homeland defense symposium co-hosted by the Rocky Mountain
Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association.
“We can’t be exchanging business cards at the scene of the incident,”
he said. “We need to know each other and know what each is capable of
doing.”