While today’s Army relies more and more on its National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers to conduct its mission, few branches of the Army rely more heavily on part-timers than the Chemical Corps. That’s become a significant challenge in recent years, according to Brig. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, because attacks by America’s current enemies are more likely to involve terrorism than conventional attacks and chemical, biological and radiological weapons could become a weapon of choice.
As the outgoing head of the Army’s Chemical Corps and commandant of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School at Fort Leonard Wood, Spoehr’s role has included training his far-flung corps and making sure local National Guard and Army Reserve units throughout the United States are ready to respond with up-to-date techniques and equipment. Part of that includes bringing back the annual Army Chemical Conference which had been allowed to fall into disuse years ago, Spoehr said, and turning it into an opportunity to exchange ideas and communicate lessons learned.
Col. Robert Walk, deputy assistant commandant for the Army Reserve at the CBRN School, said the annual conference has become an important asset for part-time chemical soldiers. Held earlier this spring, the conference drew 58 participants who represent the leadership of the Chemical Corps in their regions of the country.
“The benefits are we bring in all the brigade commanders and a good chunk of their staff so we get the active cross-fertilization between the active, the Reserve and the Guard,” Walk said. “It helps to build teams — the Army is always big about team building — and it just gives us a chance at the school to get input from the field as to what we are doing and for us, what they are doing.”
That sharing of ideas isn’t top-down from the school to the troops, Walk emphasized, but includes sharing information gained by local National Guard and Army Reserve units while responding to incidents within the United States.
Unlike units of the Army Reserve and National Guard that train in America to fight wars overseas, many members of the Chemical Corps have civilian jobs as firefighters or first responders of various types who expect to deal with hazardous materials on a regular basis due to accidents, natural disasters, or spills. Especially for the National Guard units that can be called out by their state governors to deal with major emergencies, chemical soldiers expect that the skills in which they’ve been trained could be used in the United States.
That’s perhaps most evident with the Civil Support Team program, Walk said. Each state and American territory has at least one Civil Support Team of 22 full-time Guardsmen trained to respond on short notice to a reported chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear incident, determine if there’s an actual hazard or only a hoax, and take emergency action if needed to save lives in a civilian environment. Those skills are also valuable for major disasters such as a pipeline break, a tanker spill, or a natural disaster such as an earthquake, flood or tornado that could releases hazards into the environment, he said.
“(The CST program) took some skills that were more resident outside the Army and now they’re being injected inside the Army, into the chemical branch,” Walk said. “In the late 90s, the chemical branch was very inwardly focused; (they said), ‘We work for the Army, we do force deployment.’ Now they’re saying, ‘We work for the Army, yes, but we work for the nation overall.’ It was always there, but now we’ve got to be concerned that we respond inside the States.”
Lt. Col. Christian Van Alstyne, deputy assistant commandant for the Army Reserve at the CBRN School, said this year’s conference included an after-action report on a ricin biohazard incident near the end of February in Las Vegas to which the civil support teams responded.
Lessons learned in Nevada could be applied in foreign combat situations, Van Alstyne said.
“That event has got exportables that the active component in the fight over in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (in Afghanistan) can use, so we are exchanging a lot of those tactics, techniques and procedures between the organizations,” Van Alstyne said. “All of those people have a training link that comes back here to the CBRN School, so we’re tying that in to the chemical corps as a whole.”
Civilian emergency responders are helpful, but Van Alstyne noted that the National Guard provides special assets.
“We can have a military organization that works underneath the governor of a state in day-to-day activity that can focus on just one thing, and that is weapons of mass destruction and also hazardous materials,” Van Alstyne said.
The Civil Support Teams within each state’s National Guard don’t always get much publicity, but they’re called out virtually every day to respond reports of various hazards.
“A lot of time we never hear about them being used because they identify that there is no hazard, which allows the public to get back to work faster,” Van Alstyne said.
“There are a lot of hoaxes, but also there’s just a lot of hazards in our community,” Walk said. “Any advanced industrialized society has just day-to-day hazards and these teams get to work inside their state to protect citizens and their communities against that.”
“Day to day, these accidents do happen, and these teams are available 24-7,” Van Alstyne said. “Particularly in areas in smaller cities and counties where they don’t have the budget to sustain a hazmat team, they are able to deploy.”
A recent incident in Dent County east of Fort Leonard Wood provides a good example of that response, he said. When a Missouri Air National Guard F-15 fighter crashed, it created a hazardous materials risk.
“The aircraft has a lot of advanced instrumentation and some of those rely on radiological isotopes, and an aircraft is made of carbon fiber and other advanced chemicals and alloys that if they are put under stress, explosion or heat, they can actually off-gas different things,” Van Alstyne said. “(CST teams) can do environmental monitoring with their capability to make sure the environment was safe for people to work in.”
Many calls can be resolved by telephone, Walk said, as civilian emergency personnel, customs officials, or shipping companies on the scene of a chemical spill or a suspicious package can be advised of tests they can perform with their own equipment to assess whether a hazard is present and whether they’re equipped to respond to it on their own.
Two of the brigade commanders at the conference, Brig. Gen. Wendell McLain of the 31st Chemical Brigade of the Alabama National Guard and Brig. Gen. James Cook of the 415th Chemical Brigade of the Army Reserve based in Greenville, S.C., said they appreciate the efforts being made by the Chemical Corps to seek the active participation of part-time Chemical Corps soldiers.
“As you know, it is a total force today and the National Guard plays such an important part of the total force,” McLain said. “It’s very important for us to share our thoughts and ideas with the active component.”
Cook said the Chemical Corps units in both the Army Reserve and National Guard, because of their role in hazardous materials response, play a role comparable to that of active duty forces in combat environments in testing out and evaluating the usefulness of training and doctrine developed at Fort Leonard Wood.
“We have input into doctrine and share this school. We’re field units, and therefore a lot of the selected tactics and procedures are developed with us and we have important feedback,” Cook said.
Both generals credited Spoehr with the emphasis on helping his colleagues who aren’t on active duty, and said that’s an important improvement.
“Gen. Spoehr has been a real proponent of pulling the Guard and Reserves in here and making us feel we are a port of things. He’s been good for the Guard and good for the Reserves,” McLain said. “As you know, our force is not large enough to go to war (with) active component only; we’ve never been that big. During Vietnam and World War II we had the draft to make up the difference; now we have the Guard and Reserves to make up the difference.”
Recruitment and retention isn’t always easy for the National Guard and Army Reserve, but Cook said it’s somewhat easier in the Chemical Corps because the skills being taught are directly transferrable to comparable civilian jobs.
“Now they are enticed, they get the training they need to be a fireman because they have this unique skill set. We do have this other outlet where it is civilian equivalency straight across the board,” Cook said. “Some of the things they do (in the Chemical Corps) are very, very technical. I enjoy it because you get a higher caliber of person and some pretty neat jobs.”
McLain said general military leadership training and discipline also helps.
“This leadership experience that the soldier gains by being in the military certainly helps out in the civilian side too,” McLain said. “I know from personal experience I was a squad leader managing 10 people at 20 years old. You tell me a job in civilian life where you’re a supervisor managing 10 people — it just doesn’t happen.”
McLain, who in civilian life was a top labor relations official for Alabama Power before retiring, said he understands from personal experience that employers face challenges when a National Guard or Army Reserve soldier deploys or takes extended advanced training.
“We really appreciate the support that our soldiers get from their employers today,” McLain said. “They can do this thing that we call National Guard and serve their country and deploy and provide homeland security. All those things are possible because of the employers being able to let their soldiers off to do their training and supporting them.”