Practicing What You Preach: Achieving Unity of Effort and Unified Action During Domestic Response Operations

摘要

The Department of Defense (DOD) strongly advocates unity of effort and coordinated action in their myriad joint publications and doctrine; however, DOD has yet to achieve these overarching objectives when working across interagency lines in the domestic realm. DOD Combatant Commanders have chosen instead to create a separate parallel command structure that results in inefficient response operations and duplication of effort, and may yield fatal consequences during the next catastrophic domestic event. This paper will examine the evolution of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), the National Response Plan (NRP) and DOD's role in domestic response operations; review select lessons learned from major disaster response operations, National Special Security Events (NSSE), and national exercises; and provide recommendations to fully integrate DOD capabilities into domestic response operations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's management of homeland security operations and catastrophic events.