Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 66

initiative.4 This initiative is an immersive experience
to better inform scientific research, technology
acquisition, and policy formulation through observation of the execution of CBRNE operations
in a multiechelon, field-training environment that
includes a realistic replication of the full range of
anticipated CBRNE hazards.

The CBRNE Strategic Landscape
Taking the strategic landscape of 1980 and
applying it to today, one would be hard pressed to
find a more “cannot fail” mission than countering
weapons of mass destruction (CWMD). Nearly
every strategic guidance document published
identifying threats to the United States and its allies
highly prioritizes CWMD as a clear requirement as
known adversaries continue to pursue these types of
capabilities.5 Whether those adversaries are criminals, terrorists, or nation-states, “increased access to
expertise, materials, and technologies heightens the
risk that these adversaries will seek, acquire, proliferate, and employ WMD.”6
Operational environment. With today’s unprecedented global interconnections and the ease of access
and distribution of information and threat technology,
potential CBRNE employment methods are much
harder to contain, track, and therefore counter. The
danger is also growing as regular and irregular forces,
criminals, refugees, and other agents increasingly intermingle and interact among themselves internationally
across traditional lines.
While WMD may elicit the notion of difficult-tomake-and-access nuclear or chemical weapons, many
CBRNE hazards are commercially available, easily
procured, and when coupled with a delivery means, can
have WMD-scale devast ating effects. Therefore, employing WMD, and more broadly CBRNE weapons, is
no longer the sole purview of nation-states. In addition
to a broad range of readily available conventional weapons, state and nonstate actors can select from an array of
affordable technologies that can be adapted in unconventional ways. We should, therefore, anticipate that
our adversaries will seek to develop and employ CBRNE
capabilities to shape the operating environment by
inflicting casualties, creating conditions to deter or defeat
entry operations, and eroding public allied or coalition
support together with the basic will to fight.
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WMD and CBRNE terminology. Numerous organizations exist across the national security enterprise
studying the CWMD problem set, with many varying
nuances in their definitions of WMD. However, all have
the same objectives of preventing WMD development
and use, and preparing for consequence management.
The American public expects that its government
and national security enterprise will be trained and organized correctly to meet any threat, regardless of how vast
or complex. Also, there is the public’s expectation of rapid coalescing of capabilities to defeat, contain, or respond
effectively to CBRNE threats to protect U.S. interests.
To apply the lessons learned from Operation Eagle
Claw, it is paramount that we ensure that military forces and interagency partners responsible for confronting
WMD (and more broadly CBRNE threats and hazards) are not ad hoc groups of functional, stovepiped
organizations coming together on the objective without
previous experience working together, but rather, are
an integrated force continually training for and collectively organizing appropriately to respond.

Expanding the Scope of the Threat
The Department of Defense (DOD) defines WMD
as “chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons
or devices capable of a high order of destruction and/or
causing mass casualties. This does not include the means
July-August 2016  MILITARY REVIEW