From the Blogger Roundtable with ASD McHale:
Q This is Steve Schippert with ThreatsWatch. My question kind of flies between the California situation and the question that Matt just asked, and it’s regarding military reserve readiness.
MR. MCHALE: Yeah — yeah.
Q The Air Force has a program — a reserve technician program where reservists essentially hold civil service positions that mirrors their military skills and training.
MR. MCHALE: I’m very familiar with it.
Q Right. And when they — they essentially swap their civilian clothes for their uniforms when they go to drill. My question is do you think an expanded program of that nature — one that would maybe encompass more of the reserve component — would perhaps be a way to boost readiness and improve interagency cooperation in a crisis both at a federal, a state, or even local security and disaster response?
MR. MCHALE: Steve, at the risk of flattering you let me truly say what a terrific question, and using your question as a springboard let me describe something that we have been advocating for some time within the interagency, and let me assure you that we will continue to advocate this approach with a sense of urgency and real tenacity. Not many people are all that familiar with the technician program that you have just described but I’ve been familiar with it — I and everyone in my office have been familiar with it for quite some time. And using that very consciously as a model — (audio break) — approach to intergovernmental coordination has been advocated by my office.
Here’s what I think we ought to do in order to better integrate federal, state, and local planning, public and private sector, military and civilian capabilities to ensure a unified response to a catastrophic event. We’ve come up with — I’ve testified before the Congress on this issue — we’ve come up with a concept that we call a task force for emergency response — a TFER. And it’s modeled on a similar program that was originally established in Onslow County, North Carolina. In Onslow County, Jacksonville, and the colocated Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune entered into an agreement for what they called a military civilian task force for emergency response — a MCTFER. We’ve simply shortened that to TFER. And it’s an organization that has a standing staff and planning requirement to integrate military and civilian capabilities in response to a disaster.
So we took that as a model and we began to develop a concept that would integrate these capabilities nationwide. I think there should be a task force for emergency response in every state.
I further believe that the day-to-day leader or chairman of that task force for emergency response should be the adjutant general of the state. The staff of that task force for emergency response should be modeled on the technician program that gave — (audio break) — question.
Q Right.
MR. MCHALE: To that end, National Guard planners who are drilling guardsmen on the weekend in my judgment should be hired by the Department of Homeland Security during the week in a civilian capacity in order to employ their military planning skills in meeting the civilian-led planning requirement of the task force. So you take guardsmen who have been trained as planners — guardsmen who put their uniforms on during the weekend and who drill as members of the reserve component but who during the week carry over those planning skills under DHS employment and direction —
Q Direction.
MR. MCHALE: — to achieve integrated planning at the state level. I believe that (audio break) military capabilities should be integrated into the task force through the regionally assigned defense coordinating officer — the DCO who works for NORTHCOM. DHS could be plugged into the task force through the similarly assigned regional federal coordinating officer — the FCO. The civilian portion of the task force would be invited to participate at the discretion of that state’s Governor so that you would have a combined civilian-military task force that would as its core element rely upon planners whose duties would closely resemble the precedent of the technician program that you cited. The reserve component would have a huge role to play obviously in the day-to-day activities and the success of an individual state’s task force for emergency response. That becomes the focal point for integrating Washington’s plans, the state’s plans, the locality’s plans into a unified effort and all of that is dependent upon the utilization of guardsmen much as we have utilized guardsmen for the technician program. What a great question.
Q Well, I can’t take credit for personally coming up with that question. It actually came from among our group [ahem - shameless, self-serving reference to myself - ed] at ThreatsWatch and the Center for Threat Awareness so —
