U S Army Command and General Staff Coll

An Examination of Usnorthcom's Ability to Respond to Domestic Catastrophes in Support of Civil Authorities U S Army Command and General Staff Coll

Publisher Marketing: In the wake of 9/11, the Secretary of Defense assigned to USNORTHCOM the mission of providing military forces in support of civilian authorities in case of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack anywhere in the U. S. or its territories. With this directive, USNORTHCOM planners formed Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) with the mission of providing support to civilian authorities. This Task Force contains multiple units across the United States to fulfill mission requirements to support myriad potential scenarios. In the structure of JTF-CS, there are representatives from the Army, Air Force, and Navy ready within 24-48 hours' notice to assist civilian authorities based on identified gaps in states' capabilities. Distributed across the USNORTHCOM area of responsibility, these military forces must deploy following a strict timeline set by USNORTHCOM. In order to support deployment of military forces, base support installations synchronize and coordinate deployment support efforts to ensure military forces abide to USNORTHCOM timelines. Factors that this research will consider are USNORTHCOM's ability to deploy military forces in relation to the incident area, capabilities required to support civil authorities, and requirements necessary to transport military forces to support domestic catastrophes. Successful synchronization will safeguard a unified effort among all stakeholders to include military forces and civilian authorities specifically at the state level. An increased emphasis on responsibilities by local state response forces is driving the thesis of this monograph to capture if USNORTHCOM's current employment and array of capabilities are relevant. Additionally, based on the recent changes to Army Doctrine Publication ADP 3-0, Defense Support of Civil Authorities is part of the unified land operations concept. This capstone doctrine places increased emphasis on the systems available to deploying military forces in support of civilian authorities.