which include conducting FHA exercises in coordination with
interagency partners to have a shared understanding of capabilities available during disasters;
• Prioritizing information sharing – specifically, the development of DoD policies to address this requirement during FHA
missions, as well as determining which communication systems
would be most widely available to non-DoD partners;
• Ramping-up the participation of DoD planners and operators in currently-available FHA courses, to include those offered
by USAID, the UN, the academic community as well as DoD
entities (e.g., CFE/DM);
• And leveraging existing exercise programs to foster greater
interagency coordination and training.
Clearly, there are no magic bullets here, but an effective training strategy can certainly plant the right questions for a freshly-minted practitioner, while also providing them with a credible repertoire of best practices to apply whenever duty calls.
Building the Talent Pool
While WG1 focused rigorously on the scope and content of
the training curriculum, it also looked at ways to insure FHA
training can be well absorbed and utilized. To this end, the WG
proffered up four specific recommendations:
• Look for ways to integrate existing US and international
FHA training curricula into professional military education
(PME) at all appropriate levels;
• Clearly identify FHA training requirements and competencies for service members filling FHA mission activities and
tasks;
• Add these skill identifiers to service members’ individual
records based upon their education, training and deployment
experiences;
• Insure that service personnel systems can identify service
members with FHA experience for rapid access, to meet future
spikes in demand.
Within the defense community, these initiatives would help to
better align the supply of talent and expertise at a time in history when FHA is an increasingly vital mission for the US military and a key element in supporting civilian authorities. Given
the broad swath of military specialties that potentially contribute to FHA – from transportation and logistics to engineering,
medical support, communications, reconnaissance, civil affairs,
military police, and light infantry – it is vital to infuse FHA
training into these domains as a way to develop a more common
operating picture before the next disaster hits.
8
Notes:
Participants included experts from United States Agency for
International Development, UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs, Office of Secretary of Defense, Center for Army Analysis, Peace Keeping and Stability Operations
Institute, JS/J-7, Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis
Division, Army G3/5, US Army Civil Affairs, National Defense
University, US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, InterAction, Marine Corps Civil Military Operations School, Uniformed Services University of the Health
Sciences, and US John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and
School.
2
Admittedly, predictive capacity is not our strength. Tak e, for
example, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reflections
about US military operations: “And I must tell you, when it
comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect.
We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to
Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq,
and more -- we had no idea a year before any of these missions
that we would be so engaged.” Speech at West Point, February
25, 2011. http://archive.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1539.
3
Foreign Consequence Management (FCM) includes chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNe) hazards.
1