Pacific response
teams get OKThe Hawaii National Guard
would train troops to respond
to weapons threats
The Hawaii National Guard has received authorization to begin a pilot program to train teams that would be permanently deployed on remote Pacific islands to respond to threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, state Adjutant Gen. Robert Lee said yesterday.
The goal is to have a team in place in the U.S. territories of Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands or some other island nation that would be able to respond quickly to a threat in the region, Lee told delegates at a homeland security summit in Honolulu.
Response teams also would be at the disposal of Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Lee said, noting that such response teams are contained only within the National Guard.
The authorization for the increased training was granted recently by Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard system, Lee said.
"When Lt. Gen. Blum visited us a few months ago and he saw how we did homeland security, he said this is a model," Lee said. "When he talked with Adm. Fargo that beyond Hawaii there's no such organization anywhere else in the Pacific, he gave us special authorization to increase that unit."
The Hawaii National Guard's weapons of mass destruction response team has 22 members. Lee said he was unsure how many more members would be added or what the financial impact would be because an evaluation still must be done on the region's needs.
Lee's announcement came on the final day of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit & Exposition, which brought together more than 600 delegates from 19 countries and territories in the region.
While events such as the summit are useful in talking strategy, Lee said the pilot program represents something tangible that Hawaii can point to as proof of its expertise in the area of security.
"Besides just the talk and bringing everybody together, we can now train with the latest equipment on weapons of mass destruction and send teams out now to cover the other U.S. territories," he said.
Earlier yesterday, Fargo stressed that security throughout the Asia-Pacific region would remain strong despite the shifting of resources.
The Pentagon announced plans this month to send 4,500 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks on a one-year tour in Iraq starting in February, with another 3,500 soldiers heading to Afghanistan in April. This week, the Pentagon alerted 390 members of the Pacific Army Reserve 411th Engineer Battalion that they could go to Iraq as soon as January.
"When we move organizations like the 25th Infantry Division to Iraq and Afghanistan, I look for ways to compensate for that," Fargo told conference delegates, adding that more air and naval forces are likely to be brought into the region to compensate for the loss of the Schofield soldiers.
"Frankly, I have tremendous resources available to me," Fargo said.
