VOLK FIELD, Wis. - During the PATRIOT 2011 Domestic Operations exercise at Volk Field, Wis., both military and civilian agencies participate in a unique exercise designed to bring multiple organizations together in order to rehearse their roles during a homeland security incident.
The goal of the DOMOPS scenario was quite clear according to Lt. Col. George Gosting, PATRIOT director, “We are hoping to improve our U.S. government interagency coordination by exercising with our counterparts,” he said. “We want to understand each other’s operating procedures and culture.”
Train how we fight was the focus during PATRIOT. Providing the most real world training possible for all involved is what prompted the need for inter agency support.
“We realized that it's not realistic to train for this type of response without all of the players who would typically respond,” said Gosting.
“This year is the first year that the entire domestic response has been brought together,” said Rick James, Wisconsin Emergency Management, exercise design team leader.
Planning for such an all encompassing event has taken more than 15 months of coordination and planning, with some civilian agencies planning their involvement 18 months out.
“We identified an event that would bring an all hazards approach, including fire, Emergency Medical Service, and search and rescue,” said James, “and then developed a design to draw those in and then solicited participation from the various agencies.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was just one of the many agencies to participate this year. They not only took advantage of the unique training opportunity, but they also contributed real world intelligence that was used in order to shape the exercise scenarios.
The information the FBI provided for the scenarios was an essential part of the planning process. They provided real world intelligence information from Midwest region fusion centers to create an exercise that would solicit a response from all players.
State and major urban fusion centers serve as focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial and private sector partners.
“The planning went great,” said G.B. Jones, assistant special agent in charge, FBI, Milwaukee division. Jones’s team provided three planners to attend meetings with Volk Field in order to create the most real world scenarios possible.
Those scenarios included a safe house raid, a bomb aboard an ambulance, and an explosion at a high profile event. Organizing the responses to the situations was the job of the Unified Command Center.
The Expeditionary Medical Support, Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team and Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team were just a few of the agencies that formed the UCC. They represent the agencies responding and decide what agencies would respond and when. “Depending on the nature of the incident is what dictates which agency responds, it is a very fluid exercise,” said James.
“Standing up the incident command system is a labor intensive, people intensive part of the process,” said James, “but it’s a system that all responses in the civilian world are predicated on.”
While setting up an entire domestic response may be overwhelming at times it is a vital part of making training realistic and worthwhile for those involved.
“Part of the educational process is to help the military domestic operation units understand how they can tap into the system and how it benefits them so they are more prone to use the system in their interactions,” said James.
Overall the response was accurate, said Jones, the only artificial portion of the exercise was the FBI’s initial response numbers. Many of the agents were unable to be involved due to real world commitments.
“The exercise was accurate and had a good flavor for the real world; it had an element of realism,” said Jones, who hopes to continue the FBI’s involvement in future DOMOPS exercises.
With two long days of hard training behind them the overall feeling is that DOMOPS was a great success. “All the feedback from I’ve had from the interagency partners has been, that this is wonderful training and they can’t wait till next year’s patriot,” said Gosting.
“It’s a great exercise and a great venue, the biggest thing is to let the participants know our potential and get the visibility of the exercise out so that they can come together and have a venue in which to exercise together,” said James.
Gosting said, “The most import thing that comes out of this is, if we exchange business cards in an exercise we’ll be able to interact so much better when we have to respond to a real event.”