Homeland Security is More than Homeland Defense

Abstract

The Army's total force structure (including the active duty, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard) and operational concepts are designed to support its primary wartime mission. Future modifications must include consideration as to how it will support the full-spectrum of its Homeland Security (HS) mission, including Incidents of National Significance (INS) (such as terrorist attacks or major disasters). Force structure and operational concepts have traditionally been based upon the assumption that the total force would be facing an enemy on foreign soil. The current structure is neither designed nor equipped to adequately support large numbers of displaced civilians; nor is it trained to establish, integrate and augment existing emergency and public services in the aftermath of INS. Proposed force structure transformation initiatives do not address those deficiencies and, as such, they will fail to achieve the President's federal HS national domestic all-hazards preparedness objectives. Increased operations tempo and deployments decrease the availability of Army National Guard (ANG) assets to support HS requirements, creating conflicting demands upon finite resources. The unpredictable nature of natural hazards (such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and earthquakes) and the potential magnitude of their devastation creates the perfect opportunity for a terrorist to take action while emergency responders are less vigilant. Therefore, it is imperative that HS readiness and response capabilities deny the nation's enemies the capability of exploiting such events by increasing major disaster response capabilities, thereby decreasing the duration of the recovery phase period. Accomplishing the HS mission should require the Army to re-evaluate proposed transformation initiatives. Then it must develop and implement future force structure and operational concepts that will achieve the President's HS "national domestic all-hazards preparedness" objectives.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 18, 2005
Accession Number
ADA434640

Entities

People

  • Brian K. Shaw

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Counterterrorism
  • Department Of Homeland Security
  • Emergency Response
  • Homeland Defense
  • Homeland Security
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Personnel Management
  • Public Health
  • Risk
  • Risk Analysis
  • Security
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Military Mobilization and Reserve Forces Studies.