The largest national terrorism exercise in history showcased new
plans and structures to react to large-scale attacks on the United
States.
The third Top Officials event, or TOPOFF, that ended in April involved
more than 10,000 participants from more than 200 federal, states,
local, private sector and international organizations. The event
took the Department of Homeland Security two years to plan.
TOPOFF-3 featured two inaugural performances. Authorities implemented
the recently issued National Incident Management System and National
Response Plan. “We took these two cars off the showroom floor,
and we took them on a very, very challenging test ride,” noted
one senior Department of Homeland Security official during a background
briefing.
The exercise began during the first week in March, with an intelligence
and information portion meant to test agencies’ abilities
to share information up and down the chain of command. Those intelligence
nuggets pointed to a series of preventable terrorist acts. If coordination
among state, federal and local partners were successful, the number
of simulated attacks would be reduced. Officials noted that some
attacks were thwarted during the exercise, but are saving details
for after-action analysis.
For the simulation’s sake, other attacks could not be prevented—namely
two weapons of mass destruction attacks that “killed”
thousands of citizens.
The National Incident Management System and National Response Plan
both will be changed to reflect lessons learned. “We’re
anxious to continue tweaking those documents now,” the official
said. “We have the baseline documents that we’re now
going to build standard operating procedures and operational supplements.”
Under the systems, any unmet requirements from the state and local
level come into a joint military field office, where the federal
agency partners determine if they can provide a solution to the
problem.
“We built in some deliberate Defense Department play in this
exercise, some of it in coordination with the state National Guard
units, to figure out who might have the best capability and be able
to best respond,” the senior DHS official noted.
After-action comments also addressed an often-cited problem to
reacting to a massive attack—the lack of hospital space to
handle the surge in wounded. One of the Pentagon’s roles in
the aftermath of a massive weapon strike would be setting up mobile
hospitals. Another military role centered on airlifting critical
patients out of the attack zones for treatment.