Playing Politics with Homeland Defense Teams

Following the announcement of the original HRFs, the DoD has released the plans to fill out the remaining HRF force.

The Department of Defense (DoD), in collaboration with the states, has selected Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Utah, and California to host the remaining eight homeland response forces (HRFs), which will be established in fiscal 2012. On June 3, 2010, DoD announced Ohio and Washington as the hosts for the first two HRFs, which will be established in fiscal 2011.

The creation of the HRFs is a part of DoD’s larger reorganization of its domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive (CBRNE) consequence management enterprise, initiated during the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. This reorganization will ensure DoD has a robust ability to respond rapidly to domestic CBRNE incidents while recognizing the primary role that the governors play in controlling the response to incidents that occur in their states.

The homeland response forces (HRF) will be distributed across the nation, with one HRF hosted in each of the ten Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regions. Each HRF will provide a regional response capability of approximately 570 personnel composed of CBRNE specialists, command and control and security forces. HRFs will self-deploy by ground within six to 12 hours of an event, bringing life-saving medical, search and extraction, decontamination, security, and command and control capabilities -- this represents a dramatic improvement in response time and life-saving capability to the previous construct.

Coincident with the creation of the eight HRFs in fiscal 2012, the department has selected Puerto Rico, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Kentucky, Nevada, Oregon, and Maine to replace existing CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages (CERFP) that will evolve into HRFs. These formations composed of existing National Guard units will be trained to respond to a weapons of mass destruction incident, including: locating and extracting victims from a contaminated environment, performing mass patient/casualty decontamination, and providing medical treatment as necessary to stabilize patients for evacuation.

Now, I'm sure - just absolutely sure - that there was a serious and dedicated analysis made of the trade-offs for where these HRFs were to be stationed.
The rundown of states hosting these new, heavily-funded HRFs:
MA, NY, PA, GA, TX, MO, UT, CA, OH, WA
Here's the rundown of who's up for re-election this year:
CA - Barbara Boxer fighting Carly Fiorina, needs to a security 'win' to counter Republican claims she's soft on defense
GA - Johnny Isakson, freshman senator (R) up for re-election
MA - Scott Brown, who took over Kennedy's seat; Dems trying to butter him up to support other bills
MO - Kit Bond (R), is retiring and Dems would like the seat in the state with both St Louis and KC
NY - Trying to shore up Chuck Schumer; legitimate need for HRF here given NYC
OH - Trying to save Gov Strickland, who's in an ugly, ugly fight with Kasich and losing, plus Voinovich is retiring
PA - Arlen Specter's fight for his life where he's vilified for changing sides
TX - Would you believe no election? But how do you leave 3d-largest state off of HRF list?
UT - Bennett is out after not being "conservative enough"; do Dems think they can take the seat?
WA - Patty Murray (D) seeking re-election

So at least 5 of these HRFs (CA, MO, OH, PA, WA) may be politically-motivated. NY might have political consequences, but was a no-brainer out of the gate.
But notice that FL is off the list, despite a huge unsecurable coastline, because there's no real electoral advantage there for the Democrats.
NC, with it's military bases, is likely to go Republican with Richard Burr; ditto SC and the port and Sen DeMint, so both were probably off the table to start with.
Could Michigan use some federal coin? probably, but they'd just unionize the HRFs, insist on a job bank to pay any laid-off or inactive members their full pay, and then whine to the government to take 60% ownership of the National Guard when they went bankrupt.
Maryland and Virginia - surrounding DC - could've put these guys to work, but again, there's no electoral advantage there for Democrats. Mikulski (MD) will probably win handily, and there's no Senate or Gubernatorial election in VA this year.

So maybe it's all mission-driven. But I doubt it.

By: Brant