National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams - Are They Ready and Capable to Support the Global War on Terrorism.

摘要

The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Civil Support Teams (CST) were created under the auspices of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 1997 which advocated training first-responders to deal with a WMD terrorist incident. The military was tasked to develop and maintain at least one domestic terrorism rapid response team composed of members of the armed forces, capable of aiding federal, state, and local officials in the detection, neutralization, containment, disassembly, and disposal of weapons of mass destruction. So far, Congress has authorized a total of 44 CSTs. The first 10 teams were established in the NDAA for FY 1999. Seventeen additional teams were authorized in FY 2000 and five more in FY 2001 to assist local and state authorities in assessing and evaluating a WMD attack. The first thirty-two have been certified by the Department of Defense to date. An additional 12 teams were included in the Defense Appropriations Bill for FY 2004. The CSTs are located across the country and eventually all 53 State and Territory Governors and the District of Columbia may have one at their disposal. Because of this accelerated timeline and evolution, the CSTs were rapidly developed and pressed into service very early in their life cycle development.