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Helping people at home may become a permanent part of the active Army
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Army Times
Posted: September 27th, 2008
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
The 3rd Infantry Divisions 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle. Now theyre training for the same mission with a twist at home. Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters. This new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. The mission will be a permanent one. They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. The 1st BCTs soldiers also will learn how to use the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded, 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them. Its a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that theyre fielding. Theyve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission were undertaking we were the first to get it.
Note: Positioning military troops in country to deal with internal matters violates the posse comitatus act, though the administration will argue that there is a national emergency allowing this.
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