WMD defense lacks unified command-control structure.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

The Defense Department has assigned to multiple units the job of protecting the United States against attacks by weapons of mass destruction. These agencies, however, lack a central command and control structure, said Maj. Gen. John C. Doesburg, head of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command.

Since 1992, Doesburg said, the Pentagon has parceled out WMD defense tasks to a long list of units, including the U.S. Special Operations Command, the Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, the Army's Technical Escort Unit and Chemical Biological Rapid Response Team, the U.S. Northern Command's Joint Task Force--Civil Support, and the National Guard's WMD Civil Support Teams.

In addition, the Army has established--on a provisional basis--a new "Guardian Brigade," which includes the Technical Escort Unit, the Chemical Biological Rapid Response Team and the Army Reserve Consequence Management Unit, Doesburg said. The Guardian Brigade is designed to be a rapidly deployable WMD-trained organization, able to support two combatant commanders and homeland-response requirements simultaneously.

What is missing amid all of these organizations, Doesburg said, is a central command and control structure. "We need a structure that permits rapid response," he told a recent National Defense Industrial Association conference.

As an example, Doesburg cited an incident that occurred last May in Baltimore, Md. The Baltimore Harbor Tunnel--a major bottleneck on the strategic north-south highway--was shut down for nearly six hours after workers at a nearby construction site stumbled upon obsolete Navy bombs that had been abandoned there decades ago.

He immediately ordered an ordnance disposal team to work with personnel from the city, the...