Wednesday, October 1, 2008

R.I.P. Posse C

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat will start a new mission in a new theatre this October. They have served several tours of Iraq and spent time in Afghanistan, are currently training at home, and now they will be doing that thing they do, but with a twist.

They will do it in their own country.

This is the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and to coordinate civil authorities. Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes various scenarios they may be called upon to help with such as civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios like terror attacks or plague.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded, referring to a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets. The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”)



for more information on CCMRF see:http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/


For more info on NORTHCOM see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Northern_Command
and
http://www.northcom.mil/News/2008/021408.htmlandhttp://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/



any thoughts?

1 comment:

ReverendFranz said...

while im not sure of its current role call, when 3rdID, 1st BCT was in Anwar Province it numbered 8,000.

This is probably the most battle tested BCT in the US army with something like 3 tours in iraq and at least one in 1 'ghanistan.

Im immediately reminded of what happened in Germany, and later in China, when troops were ordered to fire upon protesters, and the civil guards refused, so the trucked in some battle tested soldiers, who would do the job, in both cases, eventualy veteran soldiers were brought in and did fire upon the protesters. If i remember correctly, because of the way it played out in Tieniman Square, the original order to shoot that was refused, allowed the protesters a good amount of time to protest freely before the battle tested soldiers from the western regions were trucked in.

It seems they learn from their mistakes.