U.S. Northern Command actively enlisting partners.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

The U.S. Northern Command--established in 2002 to prevent a repeat of 9/11--is seeking assistance from a wide range of organizations to help it protect the United States, its territories and interests, said Army Col. Stover James, the organization's director of interagency coordination.

Among its growing list of partners are other military organizations; federal, state, and local agencies; academia; and industry, he said.

The command has set up a joint interagency coordination group (JIACG), with representatives from 46 defense and non-defense agencies, James told National Defense. The group includes other military units, such as the U.S. Pacific, Southern and Joint Forces Commands, as well as the National Guard and Coast Guard.

Also in the mix are the State and Transportation Departments, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Army Corps of Engineers, Geological Survey and Sandia National Laboratories.

Working with civilian organizations was a new experience for James, whose primary experience has been as an artillery officer. "The only federal agencies I ever worked with before was the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service," he said.

Every combatant command has a JIACG, but it plays a particularly important role at NORTHCOM, because so many civilian agencies are involved in homeland security, James said. The command's JIACG facilitates close and rapid coordination, integration and information sharing between civilian and military organizations, he said.

Every year, James said, JIACG helps coordinate two large-scale NORTHCOM exercises. Dubbed "Determined Promise" and "Unified Defense," these exercises simulate air, maritime and port threats; consequence-management operations; bio-terrorist attacks; weapons of mass destruction events; and natural disasters. Participants, thus far, include officials from more than 57 state and federal agencies and observers from Canada and Mexico.

NORTHCOM is the first combatant command to be assigned fulltime responsibility for homeland defense and military assistance to civilian authorities. It was stood up in October 2002, and became fully operational a year later, following an in-depth evaluation of the command's capability to meet its responsibilities.

Its specific mission is to conduct operations to deter, prevent and defeat threats and aggression aimed at the United States, its territories and interests within the command's assigned area of responsibility. Also, as directed by the president or secretary of defense, it provides military assistance to civil authorities, including consequence-management operations.

NORTHCOM's area of operations includes all air, land and sea approaches to the continental U.S., Alaska...