DOD plays a support role in CBRNE consequence management, including providing those capabilities needed to save lives, alleviate hardship or suffering, and minimize property damage caused by the incident. DOD generally provides defense support of civil authorities only when (1) state, local, and other federal resources are overwhelmed or unique military capabilities are required; (2) assistance is requested by the primary federal agency; or (3) NORTHCOM is directed to do so by the President or the Secretary of Defense. DOD has designated U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to lead the federal military portion of such a support operation in direct support of another federal agency—most often the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). DOD would be the lead federal agency for CBRNE consequence management or any other civil support mission only if so designated by the President. To be effective, DOD’s efforts must be coordinated with a wide range of federal departments and agencies—including FEMA and the Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice—in order to support 50 states, the District of Columbia, six territories, and hundreds of city and county governments. The National Response Framework establishes the principles that guide all response partners in preparing for and providing a unified national response to disasters. Under the Framework, disaster response is tiered; local government and agencies typically respond immediately after an incident. When additional resources are required, states may provide assistance with their own resources or may request assistance from other states through interstate mutual agreements or the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. Localities and states usually respond within the first several hours of a major incident. The federal government provides assistance to states if they require additional capabilities and request assistance. In the event of a catastrophic incident, such as one involving CBRNE, the framework also calls for federal response partners to anticipate the need for their capabilities before their assistance is requested. The framework lists 15 emergency support functions and designates federal lead agencies in areas such as search and rescue, public health and medical services, and transportation. DOD is a supporting agency for all 15 emergency support functions but is the primary agency only for search and rescue and public works and engineering. Additional tools to guide response efforts are provided by The National Preparedness Guidelines, including National Planning Scenarios, Target Capability and Universal Target Lists, and national priorities. DOD has created significant capabilities that could be used to augment a federal CBRNE response. It also contributes to the organization, training, and equipping of several other state military units focused on consequence management. These include the 22-person National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams that are located in each state and territory); the larger National Guard CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages of about 200 soldiers each that are located in 17 states for more expansive response; and the DOD’s CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces (CCMRF). The Civil Support Teams and CBRNE Emergency Response Force Packages are intended to be part of the state response to an incident and therefore remain under the control of the respective governors, unless they are mobilized into federal service. The CCMRF is intended to be a roughly brigade-sized force (approximately 4,500 troops) that provides the federal military assistance when a CBRNE incident exceeds local and state capabilities—including the Civil Support Teams and CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages. The CCMRFs are not whole units by themselves. They are a collection of geographically separated DOD capabilities and units across the military services and consist of such existing specialized capabilities as the U.S. Marine Corps’ Chemical Biological Incident Response Force as well as general capabilities, such as transportation units. Although the CCMRF is intended to be about 4,500 personnel in size, the size of the force that would deploy in support of an actual incident could be modified based on the size of the incident. DOD ultimately plans to have three fully functional CCMRFs. DOD would, if necessary, draw on additional general military forces over and above the CCMRF to provide assistance in the event of one or more major CBRNE incidents. DOD has operational plans for CBRNE consequence management. However, DOD has not integrated its plans with other federal government plans, because the concept and strategic plans associated with the Integrated Planning System mandated by Presidential directive in December 2007 have not been completed. Unlike most federal agencies, DOD has had CBRNE consequence management operational plans for over 10 years. DOD, NORTHCOM, and its components have prepared individual plans that address CBRNE consequence management following DOD’s well-established joint operation planning process. This process establishes objectives, assesses threats, identifies capabilities needed to achieve the objectives in a given environment, and ensures that capabilities (and the military forces to deliver those capabilities) are distributed to ensure mission success. Joint operation planning also includes assessing and monitoring the readiness of those units providing the capabilities for the missions they are assigned. DOD and NORTHCOM routinely review and update their plans as part of DOD’s joint planning system. For example, the most recent NORTHCOM CBRNE consequence management plan was completed in October 2008. DOD and NORTHCOM have also developed such planning documents as execute orders that are key to linking immediate action to those plans, as well as scenario-based playbooks to guide the planning, operations, and command and control of military forces for CBRNE efforts. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is leading a governmentwide effort to develop an Integrated Planning System that would link the plans of all federal agencies involved in incident response, including DOD’s; however, this effort is not yet complete. While much in the way of federal guidance has been developed, to be most effective, policy documents must be operationalized by further detailing roles and responsibilities for each entity that may be involved in responding to high-risk or catastrophic incidents. In December 2007, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8, Annex 1, mandated that the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the heads of other federal agencies with roles in homeland security, develop an Integrated Planning System to provide common processes for all of the entities developing response plans. The directive also called for the development of strategic plans, concepts of operations plans, and operations plans that would be integrated at the federal, regional, state, and local levels. DHS has grouped the 15 national planning scenarios on which preparedness plans are to be based into 8 scenario sets, of which 5 are CBRNE-related. Each of the scenarios, listed in table 1, includes a description, assumptions, and likely impacts, so that entities at all levels can use them to guide planning. The directive required that the Integrated Planning System be submitted to the President for approval within 2 months of the directive’s issuance in December 2007. As we have reported, the Integrated Planning System was approved in January 2009 by former President Bush, but is currently under review by the new administration, and no time frame for its publication has been announced. The approval of the CBRNE plans required under the directive (see table 2 below) would be a step toward unifying and integrating the nation’s planning efforts. For example, for each National Planning Scenario, a strategic guidance statement is intended to establish the nation’s strategic priorities and national objectives and to describe an envisioned end-state. Strategic guidance statements will have corresponding strategic plans, which are intended to define roles, authorities, responsibilities, and mission-essential tasks. Under each strategic plan, a concept of operations plan will be developed, and federal agencies are further required to develop operations plans to execute their roles and responsibilities under the concept of operations plan. As of today, strategic guidance statements have been approved for all 5 CBRNE-related scenario sets. Four of the 5 required strategic plans have also been completed. The remaining strategic plan (chemical attack) was begun in June 2009 upon the approval of the strategic guidance statement for that scenario. One of the 5 required overall federal concept plans—that for terrorist use of explosives attack—has been completed. As we have previously reported, apart from the sequential timelines required in HSPD Annex 1, FEMA and DHS have no schedule or project plan for completing the guidance and plans. Table 2 shows the status of federal CBRNE strategy and plans called for under HSPD 8 Annex 1. DOD’s plans and those of other federal and state entities cannot be fully integrated until the supporting strategic and concept plans are completed. A number of efforts to develop capability assessments are under way at local, state, and federal levels, but these efforts may not yet be sufficiently mature to provide DOD with complete data that it can use to shape its response plans for CBRNE-related incidents. For example, FEMA has begun to catalog state capabilities in its preparedness reports and is working on a capability gap analysis. However, DHS faces challenges in developing its approach to assessing capabilities and preparedness. As noted in DHS’s January 2009 Federal Preparedness Report, several key components of the national preparedness system are still works in progress, and not all data required for the federal government to assess its preparedness are available. We have previously reported that state capability data developed by individual states cannot be used to determine capability gaps across states, because the states do not use common metrics to assess capabilities and do not always have the data available that they need to complete their reports. In addition, according to DOD and FEMA, even to the extent that these data are available, states may limit their sharing of sensitive information on capability gaps with DOD entities responsible for developing DOD’s plans and related capabilities. DOD has had plans to provide CBRNE consequence management support to civil authorities since before 9/11 and in the last few years has set higher goals in the expectation of being able to provide expanded capabilities through its 3 CCMRFs.