Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

National Security Strategy and Policy:
Planning for and Responding to Threats to the U.S. Homeland

October 28-29, 2004
Ronald Reagan Building
and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Lieutenant General Joseph R. Inge, USA, Deputy Commander, U.S. Northern Command

Introduction By: Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr.

LTG Joseph R. Inge: Let me just say my name’s Joe Inge and I'm glad to be here. Did Ed Anderson leave? Well, Steve Blum is here, and if you ask me questions I can’t answer, I’ll refer to General Blum, and if he can’t answer them, we’ll go find Ed.

I've been at U.S. Northern Command out in Colorado Springs for right at 90 days, and I'm pleased to be here today representing our command, and I'm proud of the work that we are doing. On behalf of the men and women assigned to our command, it’s important and personal to me that you're attending this conference. I appreciate your support, and I appreciate the fact that you have taken time from, I know, a myriad of business schedules to be here to talk about this important topic.

I think when we come together in these forums, we ought to take every opportunity, and every day we ought to take the opportunity to remind ourselves quietly that our Nation’s at war. When you say it like that, it’s pretty daunting—our Nation’s at war. Our men and women, sons and daughters are deployed globally; many, as we stand here and speak in this comfortable environment, in harm’s way, serving our country.

I will tell you, in my last job as the First Army Commander, I had the opportunity to mobilize some 175,000 Guard and Reserve soldiers. And I will tell you that we ought to take a moment in this setting as we talk about defending the homeland and the security of our Nation to remind ourselves that our military, our regular military, but perhaps even more importantly, our Reserve forces and our National Guard are our national treasures. They're treasures that other nations don’t have in like kind. I will tell you despite what those of you that live inside of the Beltway—I learned in my last job, no one writes inside of the Beltway with good news. No one writes the IG and the Pentagon or writes their Congressman and says, “Let me tell you what a great pleasure it was to serve and how much I enjoyed my time
doing that.”

However, I will tell you my experience over the last three years tells me that the young men and women of this country are proud to serve. They know why they're serving, and they serve with a good heart and will. Every time you see one of them on the street or in an airport, or wherever you might, I just ask you to walk over and shake their hands and give them a hug. They are national treasures.

I believe the National Guard program that sends its people to state universities to get an education, if they will serve in the Guard for a six-year period, is going to enable this country to be extremely well led in 20 years when those people mature to corporate level executive leadership and they’ve matured to governmental leaders. Most of them will have served the country in the military; many of them will have been deployed into harm’s way; they will understand service to our country, and they will be an educated force. This country will be well led.

I'm here to report to you today. I decided to take a new tack from some of our other speakers. I haven't written a book about national defense this year [laughter]. I haven't been at the Command very long, so I'm going to tell you my observations of the last 90 days as I've processed in behind Ed Anderson.

USNORTHCOM, as you know, is a product of the attacks on September 11th to the World Trade Center and Pentagon. We formed in October ’01 and achieved an initial operational capability in October ’02. Then, we reached full operational capability on 11 September 2003. Well, I can tell you in the world we’re in today, you may never reach full operational capability; you just continue to mature, you continue to grow, you continue to reach for the next hurdle.

What have I seen? The Unified Command Plan has two missions for USNORTHCOM—to defend the homeland and to provide support to civil authorities in the event of consequence management. We’ve had some discussions about homeland defense/homeland security here today. For me, personally, it’s fairly clear; the lines aren't as blurred as they are perhaps for some people. The Commander of USNORTHCOM is also the Commander of NORAD. NORAD is a bi-national command, Canadians and Americans serving side-by-side to defend our nations. NORAD provides most of our irregular air patrols in the skies over our land. I’ll elaborate on them in a moment.

But what did I find when I arrived? First thing I found, and I wish Ed Anderson was still in here, I found leadership. General Ed Eberhart and LTG Ed Anderson are men of vision. They're practical men. They're men of experience, they're men of character, they're men of integrity, and they knew what they had to do as they set about with the purpose of forming this command. So I found leadership.

I found a command with a staff and procedures in place. Quite frankly, I'd been associated with USNORTHCOM when I was at First Army and they are further along than I thought they were. I found a staff engaged with the other agencies of our government. I'd heard, as an outsider, how the Defense Department didn’t talk to the Department of Homeland Security and USNORTHCOM really couldn’t talk to the Department of Homeland Security.

One of the first visits I hosted included, and some of you may know him, Lt Gen (ret) Frank Libutti, Under Secretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection in the Department of Homeland Security; Paul McHale, Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense, who was here this morning, and Mr. Ken Rapuano, Assistant to Fran Townsend who is the President’s Homeland Security Advisor. We openly laid out for them all we are doing, and as each colonel finished briefing, Secretary Libutti would ask, “Who are you talking to in my office?” In every single case, the briefer gave him at least one name, and in most cases two. No body language was observed that indicated that we shouldn’t be doing that, or that you're not welcome to do that. The sentiment was one of encouragement to continue coordinating. In every case, Secretary Libutti said, “That’s the right person.” I took that as an omen that we’ve turned a corner, that organizations are beginning to mature, and the right processes are taking place.

We have an interagency directorate in our command that encompasses some 50 different agencies, and for the major ones, I'm talking about executive level representatives from their departments across our government. Good exchange of ideas. Quite frankly, I was surprised.

And we’ve reconfigured this command to meet our designated authorities and responsibilities after we stood up. Major General Galen Jackman was here this morning, and for those of you who may not understand what Joint Task Force National Capital Region (JTF-NCR) is--it’s the command that Major General Jackman commands. In his Army role, he’s also the Commander of the Military District of Washington. Major General Jackman, you will recall, for those of you who may not know, was the person escorting Mrs. Reagan at President Reagan’s state funeral. A leader. An organizer. A man who can build consensus, bring a team together.

Joint Task Force National Capital Region was directed by DoD to be stood up 18 months ago. It has recently reached full operational capability. This command did the Reagan state funeral, the ricin attacks, and it’s working the Presidential inauguration. After that, it’ll be the State of the Union, and then to the next event or incident in Washington, D.C.

Another organization under command of USNORTHCOM is Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS). This command responds to weapons of mass destruction worldwide, and is located in Norfolk. JTF-CS executes a time-phased force and deployment data (TPFDD) of early entry forces. We have the prerogative to raise and lower the response levels of this unit depending on the threat. We just recently changed its response level to meet the needs of the increased threat period that we are in.

Next, USNORTHCOM commands Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6), that some of you are familiar with, which has recently been converted and reconfigured to Joint Task Force North (JTF-N). Now, its mission is not only to support counternarcotics, but also to support counterterrorism. The last one is a new mission for JTF-N—they are on their feet—up and running.

We work with our service components. We have quick reaction forces ready to deploy. Many people lament about, well, USNORTHCOM does not have enough forces assigned. Part of the burden is back on us. If we identify a requirement for forces, it’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re asking for them, and there are several things we are working that I’ll talk about in a minute.

Let me talk about our bi-national partner—North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It is not a part of USNORTHCOM, but the Commander of USNORTHCOM is dual-hatted as both. NORAD has flown over 38,000 sorties since 9/11—accident-free to this day. Every time the President’s out, there’s an air patrol over him. Irregular air patrols are flown over cities, critical infrastructure, and during National Special Security Events like the recent political conventions in Boston and New York City. NORAD has transformed itself from looking outward to also looking inward to detect threats—almost a completely new mission. Oh, by the way, a majority of the sorties and missions flown are done by Air National Guardsmen. Superb performance, superb duty. On call all the time, every day, 24/7.

We’ve linked USNORTHCOM closely to the U.S. Coast Guard. In fact, our Deputy Director of Operations is a Coast Guard admiral. We work maritime issues in the inner waterways and the outer areas of the USNORTHCOM area of responsibility—we are working issues with the U.S. Coast Guard all the time. We coordinate with the headquarters of the U.S. Coast Guard. We do not command Coast Guard forces; of course, these forces belong to the Department of Homeland Security. We have good relations and good coordination with them, and I think you’ll hear from the Admiral as he speaks this afternoon, and I believe he will agree with me.

Likewise with the National Guard, we have a very close coordinating relationship. LTG Blum and I have been working together for a long time before this, and LTG Blum, as you know, was the Chief of Staff of USNORTHCOM before he came to his current job. We’ve worked multiple methods of command and control of Guard forces. Some in state status under control of the governor, some in Title 32 status under the control of adjutant general and the governor, some in joint task forces where the commander was dual-hatted Title 10 and Title 32, with Title 10 and Title 32 forces under him or her. There are multiple ways we can do it. We should, in my opinion, for each event, look at what’s the best arrangement to meet the needs of that specific event, and we should proceed. We have a very good dialogue with the Guard and very good support from our Guard forces. And I think I expressed to you earlier how I feel about our Reserve forces and the capability that they bring to our Nation.

I found a command that was operating every day. As we speak, there are people in our operations center tracking whatever’s going on in the world—hurricanes of late. We’re experts, we’re “T’d,” as we say in the Army, for “trained.” We’re T’d in managing hurricanes. Oh, by the way, the State of Florida is T’d in managing hurricanes, as is the Guard Bureau and everybody else involved in the recent hurricane disaster relief efforts. There are many lessons learned, from how hurricane consequence management should be done to how you do some other kind of event that may be a natural disaster or man-made.

The military has to learn, and USNORTHCOM has learned, that when we are doing consequence management, we’re not in charge. We are in support of whoever the lead federal agency might be. It goes back to an earlier question, in my mind; we have military forces working for civilian agencies all the time. We just get mixed-up with our words when we start talking, and sometimes words like command and control and operational control (OPCON) can cause us to get into arguments we really don’t need to be in. The fact of the matter is military forces work in support of the lead federal agency, albeit under the command of military officers for the reasons, I think, the Adjutant General of Washington aptly expressed.

We are operating every day. I called in on Saturday and Sunday to our Domestic Warning Center to check in and they rendered a report the way an operations center ought to. I think you’d be proud of what they do, proud of what they're monitoring, and proud of their ability to respond. We are a command looking to the future. We are a command training—preparing for the future.

We just did a major exercise. In fact, it happened the week I arrived, which involved many different federal agencies like FEMA, and people from agencies across the land—at the state, local, and first responder levels. A variety of vignettes were exercised so that we were overstressed, far more than you could imagine—we had airliners that were hijacked, drones being flown off of oil platforms, and a chemical response in a raceway and at a port. That’s just a few of the kinds of events that were in our exercise scenarios. It wasn’t just a few soldiers, sailors, airmen and coasties, active, reserve, and guard involved in this—it was responders from all agencies, military and civilian from across the land.

What are our priorities for the future? We talked a lot here this morning and several times Posse Comitatus has come up, as well as other laws and restrictions on the use of the military. I don’t think there’s anyone in here that wants to look for an opportunity to use the military in the homeland. I know I don’t. But I agree with whoever stated it on the last panel—often, it seems to me, we use some of our rules and restrictions to allow us to say what we can’t do instead of figuring out what it is we ought to do.

I believe the test will be, whenever we have another disaster—what was it that the people of the land, our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, children, what was it they thought we should have done. This ought to be our way of deciding whether we need to change the rules and regulations. What would the taxpayers in your hometown have wanted you to do that you didn’t do? Instead of “I can’t do it because of Posse Comitatus,” the military can do in our country that which the people want us to do. We already have rules in place that allow that to happen.

We’ve got to continue to work on responding to a weapon of mass destruction attack. I assume LTG Blum will talk some about his CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package (CERFP) teams and what he’s doing with JTF-CS, so I won’t dwell on it so much. However, we’re not where we need to be with enough robust capability, and we’ve got to continue to work on that. That’s not to say that there’s not good work going on and there are not people in place, because certainly there are. It’s something we need to continue to work in the future.

We talked about intelligence and information sharing this morning. I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw when I arrived at USNORTHCOM. The intelligence and information sharing was much further along than I thought it would be. I will tell you, as I've been briefed, I now worry more about what we don’t know than about what someone knows, but they decided not to let us know. However, there is still work to be done in this area and the discussions you heard this morning are relevant.

As you know we have an integrated air defense system located here in the National Capital Region. I don’t know about you, but I would just as soon they didn’t have to be here. But I think for the moment it’s prudent and appropriate that they be here. The American people know they are here as well as our enemies. In this instance, it is National Guardsmen out of the state of Florida who are manning those systems 24/7. We will work through cruise missiles, attacks from UAVs, if necessary, as we work into the future.

The ballistic missile defense system is in what we call “shakedown.” I won’t get into many details because Lt Gen Obering is here to talk about this system specifically. I would tell you that when I arrived at USNORTHCOM, I found the system well in place, and very competent people serving our country, bringing the system to reality. Again, the fire control system is manned by National Guardsmen in Alaska.

As we move to the future, many people want to stand up and say, “I can do that, I can do that.” We've got to be mindful that we keep our joint force trained. We talked a lot today about whether to reorganize our force and its capabilities—and all that’s fine, but we’ve got to make sure that we keep our sons and daughters trained to do whatever it is we ask them to do. What a tragedy it would be if there were a chemical event in downtown DC and we sent the DC Guard in and their protective mask didn’t work, or they didn’t know how to use their mask, and we lost some of them. They would die in combat just as certainly as those who have paid the sacrifice in Baghdad. We’ve got to keep training—we’ve got to keep our force ready and prepared.

We’ve got to continue to train and execute the National Response Plan. The National Response Plan tells us our rules of engagement and how we execute with all the myriad of players. The problem is too many people come in and they start to talk about what should be done and they haven’t read the plan yet. It’s a good plan, and if you haven't read it, I would commend it to you.

We’ve got to continue to work with our interagency partners like FEMA, the FBI, or whoever the lead federal agency might be. We’re fond of saying at USNORTHCOM, it’s too late to be trading business cards at the site of the disaster; you’d better get out there and know who those people are ahead of time.

We’ve got to partner and continue to partner with our international friends. I heard the Canadian National Security Advisor, Mr. Wright, at lunch today. We’ll hear from a representative from Mexico tomorrow. It’s important—it’s in all of our best interests to partner in places that are common to all of us. It’s one of those pieces of the business that never stops. Once its neglected just a little bit, you're behind the curve and you will forever be playing catch-up to rebuild confidence and acquaintances, and building back to where you ought to be.

We've got to keep partnering with the private sector. Secretary McHale talked a little bit this morning about technologies, non-lethal weapons, ways of unintrusive inspections, and biometrics. This research can’t be done by one party alone—it’s got to be a partnering of the interagency, industry, and Congress. There is lots of work to be done in this area.

We need to continue to grow. The day we think we have arrived, the day we think we’ve matured, and the day we think we have the magic keys to the kingdom is the day complacency takes over. It’s the day that we will fail. We must continue to grow.

I will close by saying I choose to say it’s an exciting time to serve our country. I believe that. I don’t believe that there are many people in our land that are sacrificing. As you listen to people on TV talk about the sacrifices people are making and then go look up the definition in the dictionary—not too many of us are called to sacrifice. Many of America’s sons and daughters are enduring hardship and having a hard day, but that’s significantly different than sacrifice. It’s a privilege to serve; it’s a privilege to serve this Nation. It’s all about the future of our homeland, and it depends on all of us—you, me, our sons and daughters, our friends and neighbors.

I look forward to your questions. Thank you for having me here today. [Applause]

Questions and Answers

TIM FLYNT: Tim Flynt, SPAWAR System Center, San Diego. Regarding missile defense, who has the firing key for missiles fired from the Far East? Is it going to be USPACOM, USSTRATCOM or USNORTHCOM--provided the missile is headed to CONUS?

DR. PFALTZGRAFF: Since many of these questions have to do with missile defense, and no one has asked General Blum a question specifically, I wanted to ask General Blum if he would elaborate a bit on the chart that he had on which he showed the role of the National Guard in missile defense. So if that could be added since it’s going to be quite an array of answers on missile defense.

GENERAL OBERING: In terms of the dollars for missile defense, are they being spent in proper balance? I’ll just say this: Yes, we have spent a lot of money in missile defense. The thing about ballistic missiles, number one, is they appear to be the weapon of choice around the world. That’s why the proliferation is growing like it is. And it is also a chess game. You can imagine, what would the context be like if we were facing a nuclear-tipped North Korea, capable of reaching the United States? How does that change our behavior in the world? How would it change our allies’ behavior in the world? We have seen nations be held hostage by the capturing and abducting of just individual citizens. What happens if a nation can hold hostage an entire nation or entire cities with these weapons? So I think the money is being well spent in terms of being able to have a defense against these. Because you have to turn around and say, well, if we don’t spend in this regard, because it is expensive to do this, we have no defense. So we stand basically at the whim of what some other nations may be able to do.

We also know that, unlike the past and the Cold War, many of the nations and the national actors and the non-governmental actors on the stage today are not behaving in what we would consider to be a rational manner many times. So we can’t go through the calculations that we sometimes do and have done in the past.

I think there was a question in there about the sea-based approach. That is something that we very much are investigating quite heavily, as you saw in the presentation, and we are trying to address that threat as well from what would be a more asymmetric type of approach to the United States.

Last is the fire control, I think, between PACOM, I think that question was, if we have the ability to engage from the Pacific theater of operations. That is why I showed that we’re trying to build an integrated fire control. That will be in close coordination with NORTHCOM, and I know General Inge may want to chime in on this, but the operational control that’s exercised over the ballistic missile defense system has been the responsibility of STRATCOM that has been delegated to NORTHCOM for their AOR, and they have to coordinate very closely with PACOM if we get into a shooting war that involves PACOM assets. That’s up to NORTHCOM to facilitate that along with STRATCOM.

GENERAL BLUM: On the missile defense piece, it’s pretty simple. The Air Force has given certain pieces of that to the Air National Guard to execute and it's got to do with radars. And in the Army National Guard, there’s a significant role to play. All of the forces that are in Fort Greeley that basically maintain, operate and control and launch these things, the land element of that resides 100% in the Army National Guard in Alaska, some in California, and Control Brigade headquarters is in Colorado. That’s pretty much what we do -- we do what the Army wants us to do for space and missile defense command and to make this thing work.

GENERAL INGE: I would tell you that the Brigade Commander of the Missile Defense guys from Colorado Guard comes to our command updates when we do missile updates. I've had the opportunity to be among his soldiers that are the guys that are operating the systems in the ground in Alaska. You’d be very proud of them. They're specially selected people based on their skills and their capabilities and they're in pretty dang good shape when it comes to training and being prepared to execute their mission.

I would agree with General Obering on the comment; it’s no doubt in the NORTHCOM commander’s mind that he is the guy who fights the system should the need ever come, and we’re talking about defending the continental United States. And we have practiced that, and we are in pretty good shape of putting all that together.

Thanks for your attention here today, and thanks for your support.