Cheryl Pellerin at the DoD News offers the below piece:
WASHINGTON, May 18, 2015 - In a geopolitical environment with proliferating
threats, a Defense Department whole-of-government exercise held May 5-8 provided
a realistic way for federal, state and local experts to interact in simulated
situations involving mock home-grown terrorists and a nuclear incident.
This year's Nuclear Weapon Accident Incident Exercise, or NUWAIX 2015, took
place on Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor located on the Kitsap Peninsula in the state
of Washington.
As the home base for the Navy's fleet on West Puget Sound, NBK-B supports
surface ships and fleet ballistic missile and other nuclear submarines whose
home ports are Bremerton and Bangor.
The set the stage for the actions required within a whole-of-government
framework to mitigate the consequences of an incident involving a U.S. nuclear
weapon in DoD custody at a military base in the continental United States. Among
other goals, the exercise aimed to enhance the cooperative efforts of federal,
state and local response agencies.
Exercise Participants
Federal participants in the exercise included the assistant secretary of
defense for nuclear matters, U.S. Northern Command, the FBI, the Department of
Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration .
Other participants included the U.S. Navy Region Northwest, Strategic Weapons
Facility-Pacific, Marine Corps Security Forces Battalion-Bangor, officials from
the State of Washington and Kitsap County, and others.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA, was the DoD exercise lead.
"I'm very proud of the DTRA team that planned and executed NUWAIX 15,
integrating and managing over 1,500 participants who made up a
whole-of-government response," DTRA Director Ken Myers said after the exercise.
"DTRA's motto is 'Making the World Safer,' and I guarantee that our world is a
bit safer today because of the superb exercise this team developed and executed
in Washington."
Preparation
The NUWAIX 15 field-training exercise took three days to complete and a year
to plan, DTRA lead and exercise project officer Army Maj. Matt Kershner told DoD
News during a recent interview.
Planning included a concept development meeting to determine the elements
that each participant wants the exercise to address.
"One agency might say that they need contamination," Kershner said. "Another
agency might say, that they want to work on security, or another agency might
say that they want to work on communications. We took all those and ... and from
there determined what the scenario needed to be in order to achieve as many of
the training objectives as possible."
Next came the planning meetings -- initial, mid and final.
The Big Concept
In the initial meeting, he said, we "hammered out all the differences with
regards to the equities everybody wanted," the major said.
"At that point you agree to the big concepts. For example, we all agreed on
the number of weapons systems, we all agreed there would be contamination -- so
you start trying to finalize as many of the details as possible," he added.
By the mid planning meeting the scenario was complete except for logistics,
Kershner said -- how many people and vehicles needed to be in each of three
field-training sites for the exercise.
"The final planning meeting was fine tuning the last-minute details -- the
major logistics," he said, adding that one of the most complex jobs this year
was scheduling and coordinating military flights for equipment and people from
different organizations.
Remaining Issues
In March, DTRA conducted a senior leader facilitated discussion to give
senior leaders of those who would participate in the exercise an opportunity to
work through and talk through remaining issues without going through the
exercise, Kershner said.
The details of the exercise were closely held and never revealed to the
players, he added.
During the week of the exercise, coordinators did last-minute fixes, trained
the exercise observers/controllers, held safety and security briefings, and
pre-staged three remote sites to be used in the exercise.
On May 5, the exercise began. Here's the scenario:
A domestic terrorist organization with a transnational connection attacked a
weapons convoy on Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. An NBK-B weapons movement supervisor
who works onsite helped the terrorists do this.
The attack killed and injured many Marine Corps Security Force Battalion
members. In the exercise, this was Site 1.
The attacking force then removed the weapon from the convoy and ran, with
responders in pursuit. During pursuit and before leaving the base, the
terrorists detonated an explosive device.
The site and weapon suffered damage, and the explosion caused radiological
contamination. The Strategic Weapons Facility responded as the Navy Initial
Response Force. This was Site 2.
Weapon Incident Response
Federal departments and agencies determined the weapon was in Kitsap County,
and the Navy Region Northwest Response Task Force was activated on the base.
Federal agencies deployed specialized personnel and technical teams to conduct
weapon incident response operations in the Kitsap County area. This was Site 3,
at a location near NBK-B.
After the weapon was returned to federal control and determined to be safe,
it was prepared for shipment and moved to a designated facility.
Describing the three remote sites, Kershner said Site 1, also known as the
"Attack" site, was pre-staged with wrecked vehicles and dead and wounded bodies
of Marines and terrorists. All bodies were adorned with realistic-looking mock
wounds and injuries, a practice called moulage that's used for medical
training.
"Site 2 was the explosion, where the U.S. stockpile weapon did not function
as designed but was rather damaged, he said, adding that the explosion "gave us
the contamination we needed for the event."
Tactical Actions
Also at that site, Kershner said, technical assets from different government
agencies were able to "get into the immediate actions of dealing with that type
of weapon system."
Site 3, a geographically separated area about 10 miles away, involved
tactical actions and investigative issues that follow such an event, he
said.
This included "tracking down leads and conducting interviews, that led to and
culminated in tactical actions -- tactical meaning civilian law enforcement
assets forcefully capturing or killing terrorists," Kershner said.
The exercise was over when most or all training objectives were met and the
exercise director determined that the exercise was complete.
After-action Review
Immediately afterward, with input from the observers/controllers, the lead
team offered what Kershner called a "hot wash," or a facilitated after-action
review that provided initial feedback on the exercise performance.
In about 90 days, a comprehensive after-action review will be produced in
classified and unclassified versions, he explained.
Exercise personnel included role players, observers/controllers and
players.
Observers/controllers observed the players and noted positive and negative
actions which would be the foundation of the after-action report, Kershner said.
Players are always experts -- the people who actually do the jobs that are
focused on in the exercise -- so during the exercise they were allowed to work
freely.
Setting the Stage
In the exercise, Kershner said, "the scenario really sets the stage for
actions required within the whole-of government response framework."
He added, "That goes to consequence management, the immediate actions that
would require the recapture and recovery of U.S. assets, and the deployment of
these types of teams and organizations and agencies throughout the United
States."