Military launches homeland defense command

A new U.S. military command responsible for North America began operating Tuesday, codifying the Pentagon's new role in supporting homeland defense.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz joined Northern Command leader Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart to dedicate the new Northern Command, which will begin operations with an annual budget of $70 million and 582 employees in Colorado Springs, Colo., and other locations around the country.

For the first time in the country's history, a single military command will be assigned the mission of defending the continental United States and Alaska. In addition, the new command will oversee U.S. military activities in Canada, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the oceans surrounding the United States out to 500 miles. Hawaii will remain the responsibility of the U.S. Pacific Command.

"This is very, very much new territory, especially for the U.S. military," Peter Verga, special assistant to the defense secretary for homeland security, said at a Heritage Foundation discussion last month. "We haven't operated inside the United States since the Civil War, and we like it that way. But this is a different world, and we have prepared to do that."

Tuesday's opening ceremony also marked the merging of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs with the U.S. Strategic Command at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. Navy Adm. James Ellis plans to head the modified Strategic Command.

The Northern Command will not have a significant number of combat forces permanently assigned to it but will nevertheless be able to call on air, naval and ground forces to respond to a threat emanating from outside U.S. borders as well as specialized units to support recovery efforts after a domestic terrorist attack, including chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological attack.

"If it's an external threat coming in, we will have the lead," Eberhart said recently. "If it's internal, we will assist."

Verga said the Northern Command's most valuable contribution to domestic security, however, would be its ability to plan for worst-case scenarios. "With regard to what we are calling the 'high-end' problems-the extraordinary circumstances under which we might have to operate-having a single command responsible for both the planning and execution of those activities is important," Verga said. A hypothetical "high-end" event, he said, would be a simultaneous detonation of nuclear weapons in multiple U.S. cities.

To meet its new responsibilities, the Northern Command will rely heavily on the National Guard. "We can't have a Northern Command, we can't provide for the homeland defense … without the National Guard," Eberhart told guard leaders in California in early September.