McHale: disaster response time expected to improve.

• Position: Paul McHale - Brief article

As the hurricane season approaches, the Defense Department has attempted to reduce the time it would need to mobilize troops to respond to a domestic catastrophe, said Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense.

While some units were being mobilized as Katrina approached the coast, it took about five days after landfall for the 72,000 military personnel to be fully fielded, McHale told an NDIA conference. While this was the fastest deployment to date in response to a domestic emergency, and the Pentagon largely escaped the criticism the Department of Homeland Security suffered, "it was not the result of superior planning," McHale said.

Since September, the Defense Department has put a good deal of effort into drawing up plans to respond to major...