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December 2007                                                                                              Volume 13 - Number 3

Exercise Updates...

TOPOFF 4
By Mark Brabrook

As quoted from the DHS website, “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Top Officials (TOPOFF) Exercise is a Congressionally-mandated two-year cycle of seminars, planning events, and exercises designed to strengthen the nation’s capacity to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from large-scale terrorist attacks. The cycle culminates in a full-scale exercise that simulates a coordinated terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”   These exercises are designed to test emergency response capabilities through real world scenarios.  Each TOPOFF incorporates lessons learned from each previous exercise.   There have been three previous full-scale exercises.

The TOPOFF 4 full-scale exercise took place from October 15th – 19th.  It involved more than 15,000 and was based on National Planning Scenario 11 (NPS-11).  The scenario began as terrorists, who have been planning attacks in Oregon, Arizona, and the U.S. Territory of Guam, successfully brought radioactive material into the United States.  The first of three coordinated attacks occurred in Guam, with the simulated detonation of a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), or “dirty bomb,” causing casualties and wide-spread contamination in a populous area near a power plant.  Similar attacks occurred in the hours that follow in Portland and Phoenix.  

TOPOFF 4 contained several new elements from the previous exercises:
•    “Increased coordination with U.S. Department of Defense exercises to combat global terrorism
•    Expanded emphasis on prevention – the opportunity to piece together an intelligence “puzzle” and stop an attack before it occurs
•    Focus on mass decontamination and large-scale recovery and remediation issues
•    Focus on coordinating procedures and communications with a U.S. territory”  
DHS’ objectives for TOPOFF 4 were:
•    “Prevention: To test the handling and flow of operational and time-critical intelligence between agencies to prevent a terrorist incident.
•    Intelligence/investigation: To test the handling and flow of operational and time-critical intelligence between agencies prior to, and in response to, a linked terrorist incident.
•    Incident management: To test the full range of existing procedures for domestic incident management of a terrorist weapon of mass destruction (WMD) event and to improve top officials’ capabilities to respond in partnership in accordance with the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System.
•    Public information: To practice the strategic coordination of media relations and public information issues in the context of a terrorist WMD incident or incident of national significance.
•    Evaluation: To identify lessons learned and promote best practices.”
While the scenario was designed to be real life-based, it did contain some artificiality to ensure conformance with agencies’ and jurisdictions’ training objectives.

No results on TOPOFF 4 have been posted online.  This is not a large surprise as lessons learned from it are undoubtedly considered sensitive by homeland security officials.