By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, May 18, 2015 – In a geopolitical environment
with proliferating threats, a Defense Department whole-of-government exercise
held May 5-8 provided a realistic way for federal, state and local experts to
interact in simulated situations involving mock home-grown terrorists and a
nuclear incident.
This year’s Nuclear Weapon Accident Incident Exercise, or
NUWAIX 2015, took place on Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor located on the Kitsap
Peninsula in the state of Washington.
As the home base for the Navy’s fleet on West Puget Sound,
NBK-B supports surface ships and fleet ballistic missile and other nuclear
submarines whose home ports are Bremerton and Bangor.
The set the stage for the actions required within a
whole-of-government framework to mitigate the consequences of an incident
involving a U.S. nuclear weapon in DoD custody at a military base in the
continental United States. Among other goals, the exercise aimed to enhance the
cooperative efforts of federal, state and local response agencies.
Exercise Participants
Federal participants in the exercise included the assistant
secretary of defense for nuclear matters, U.S. Northern Command, the FBI, the
Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Agriculture, the
Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration .
Other participants included the U.S. Navy Region Northwest,
Strategic Weapons Facility-Pacific, Marine Corps Security Forces
Battalion-Bangor, officials from the State of Washington and Kitsap County, and
others.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA, was the DoD
exercise lead.
“I'm very proud of the DTRA team that planned and executed
NUWAIX 15, integrating and managing over 1,500 participants who made up a
whole-of-government response,” DTRA Director Ken Myers said after the exercise.
“DTRA's motto is ‘Making the World Safer,’ and I guarantee that our world is a
bit safer today because of the superb exercise this team developed and executed
in Washington.”
Preparation
The NUWAIX 15 field-training exercise took three days to
complete and a year to plan, DTRA lead and exercise project officer Army Maj.
Matt Kershner told DoD News during a recent interview.
Planning included a concept development meeting to determine
the elements that each participant wants the exercise to address.
“One agency might say that they need contamination,”
Kershner said. “Another agency might say, that they want to work on security,
or another agency might say that they want to work on communications. We took
all those and … and from there determined what the scenario needed to be in
order to achieve as many of the training objectives as possible.”
Next came the planning meetings -- initial, mid and final.
The Big Concept
In the initial meeting, he said, we “hammered out all the
differences with regards to the equities everybody wanted,” the major said.
“At that point you agree to the big concepts. For example,
we all agreed on the number of weapons systems, we all agreed there would be
contamination -- so you start trying to finalize as many of the details as
possible,” he added.
By the mid planning meeting the scenario was complete except
for logistics, Kershner said -- how many people and vehicles needed to be in
each of three field-training sites for the exercise.
“The final planning meeting was fine tuning the last-minute
details -- the major logistics,” he said, adding that one of the most complex
jobs this year was scheduling and coordinating military flights for equipment
and people from different organizations.
Remaining Issues
In March, DTRA conducted a senior leader facilitated
discussion to give senior leaders of those who would participate in the
exercise an opportunity to work through and talk through remaining issues
without going through the exercise, Kershner said.
The details of the exercise were closely held and never
revealed to the players, he added.
During the week of the exercise, coordinators did
last-minute fixes, trained the exercise observers/controllers, held safety and
security briefings, and pre-staged three remote sites to be used in the
exercise.
On May 5, the exercise began. Here’s the scenario:
A domestic terrorist organization with a transnational
connection attacked a weapons convoy on Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. An NBK-B
weapons movement supervisor who works onsite helped the terrorists do this.
The attack killed and injured many Marine Corps Security
Force Battalion members. In the exercise, this was Site 1.
The attacking force then removed the weapon from the convoy
and ran, with responders in pursuit. During pursuit and before leaving the
base, the terrorists detonated an explosive device.
The site and weapon suffered damage, and the explosion
caused radiological contamination. The Strategic Weapons Facility responded as
the Navy Initial Response Force. This was Site 2.
Weapon Incident Response
Federal departments and agencies determined the weapon was
in Kitsap County, and the Navy Region Northwest Response Task Force was
activated on the base. Federal agencies deployed specialized personnel and
technical teams to conduct weapon incident response operations in the Kitsap
County area. This was Site 3, at a location near NBK-B.
After the weapon was returned to federal control and
determined to be safe, it was prepared for shipment and moved to a designated
facility.
Describing the three remote sites, Kershner said Site 1,
also known as the “Attack” site, was pre-staged with wrecked vehicles and dead
and wounded bodies of Marines and terrorists. All bodies were adorned with
realistic-looking mock wounds and injuries, a practice called moulage that’s
used for medical training.
“Site 2 was the explosion, where the U.S. stockpile weapon
did not function as designed but was rather damaged, he said, adding that the
explosion “gave us the contamination we needed for the event.”
Tactical Actions
Also at that site, Kershner said, technical assets from
different government agencies were able to “get into the immediate actions of
dealing with that type of weapon system.”
Site 3, a geographically separated area about 10 miles away,
involved tactical actions and investigative issues that follow such an event,
he said.
This included “tracking down leads and conducting interviews,
that led to and culminated in tactical actions -- tactical meaning civilian law
enforcement assets forcefully capturing or killing terrorists,” Kershner said.
The exercise was over when most or all training objectives
were met and the exercise director determined that the exercise was complete.
After-action Review
Immediately afterward, with input from the
observers/controllers, the lead team offered what Kershner called a “hot wash,”
or a facilitated after-action review that provided initial feedback on the
exercise performance.
In about 90 days, a comprehensive after-action review will
be produced in classified and unclassified versions, he explained.
Exercise personnel included role players,
observers/controllers and players.
Observers/controllers observed the players and noted
positive and negative actions which would be the foundation of the after-action
report, Kershner said. Players are always experts -- the people who actually do
the jobs that are focused on in the exercise -- so during the exercise they
were allowed to work freely.
Setting the Stage
In the exercise, Kershner said, “the scenario really sets
the stage for actions required within the whole-of government response
framework.”
He added, “That goes to consequence management, the
immediate actions that would require the recapture and recovery of U.S. assets,
and the deployment of these types of teams and organizations and agencies
throughout the United States.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment