The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the U.S. federal government with responsibilities in public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management. It was created in November 2002 in response to 9/11 and is the youngest U.S. cabinet department.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense which advises the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council on military matters. The composition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is defined by statute and consists of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (VCJCS), the military service chiefs from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and the chief of the National Guard Bureau, all appointed by the president following Senate confirmation. Each of the individual military service chiefs, outside their Joint Chiefs of Staff obligations, works directly for the secretary of the military department concerned, e.g. the secretary of the Army, the secretary of the Navy, and the secretary of the Air Force.
The defense readiness condition (DEFCON) is an alert state used by the United States Armed Forces.
State defense forces (SDF); also known as state military, state military force(s), state guards, state militias, or state military reserves) in the United States are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government. State defense forces are authorized by state and federal law and are under the command of the governor of each state.
Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) is the United States and Canadian military operation related to homeland security and support to federal, state, and local agencies. The operation began 14 September 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks.
United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) is one of eleven unified combatant commands of the U.S. military. The command is tasked with providing military support for non-military authorities in the U.S., and protecting the territory and national interests of the United States within the continental United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, The Bahamas, and the air, land and sea approaches to these areas. It is the U.S. military command which, if applicable, would be the primary defender against an invasion of the U.S.
United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Armed Forces. USJFCOM was a functional command that provided specific services to the military. The last commander was Army Gen. Ray Odierno. As directed by the President to identify opportunities to cut costs and rebalance priorities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended that USJFCOM be disestablished and its essential functions reassigned to other unified combatant commands. Formal disestablishment occurred on August 4, 2011.
The Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance is a subordinate command of the United States Strategic Command, one of the nine Unified Combatant Commands under the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and co-located with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In its relatively new status, it serves as the center for planning, execution and assessment of the United States military's global Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance operations; a key enabler to achieving global situational awareness.
Allied Command Transformation (ACT) is a military command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 2003 after restructuring.
Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) is a subordinate command of United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) that contributes to United States national security by recommending strategic technical solutions. JWAC has evolved from a small program office into a joint command of more than 400 personnel. As it grew, it became part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1994 and then was spun off as an independent joint command subordinate to United States Joint Forces Command in 1998.
Joint Force Headquarters National Capital Region (JFHQ-NCR) is directly responsible for the homeland security and defense of the Washington D.C. area as well as surrounding counties in Virginia and Maryland. Primarily made up of joint military units within the National Capital Region, the JFHQ-NCR assists federal and local civilian agencies and disaster response teams in the event that the capital area's security is or possibly could be breached by acts of terrorism. Officially activated on September 22, 2004, JFHQ-NCR is part of United States Northern Command.
The United States Department of Defense is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national security and the United States Armed Forces. The DoD is the largest employer in the world, with nearly 1.3 million active-duty service members as of 2016. More employees include over 826,000 National Guard and Reservists from the armed forces, and over 732,000 civilians bringing the total to over 2.8 million employees. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the DoD's stated mission is to provide "the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security".
Purdue University's Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS, is currently being used by Homeland Security and the US Defense Department to simulate crises on the US mainland. SEAS "enables researchers and organizations to try out their models or techniques in a publicly known, realistically detailed environment." It "is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence. [...] The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models are the most highly developed and complex of the 62 available to JFCOM-J9. Each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people."
Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) is a multi-disciplinary research center of Old Dominion University. VMASC supports the University’s Modeling & Simulation (M&S) degree programs, offering M&S Bachelors, Masters and Ph.D. degrees to students across the Colleges of Engineering and Technology, Sciences, Education, and Business. Working with more than one hundred industry, government, and academic members, VMASC furthers the development and applications of modeling, simulation and visualization as enterprise decision-making tools to promote economic, business, and academic development.
The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) is a Chairman's Controlled Activity and is designated as DoD's office of primary responsibility for DoD-wide personnel recovery (PR) matters, less policy. JPRA is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia with schools located in Fredericksburg, VA and Spokane, WA. JPRA currently provides for commanders, forces, and individuals on joint PR activities through development and conduct of education and training courses, and specialized individual training. The agency assesses, advises, and evaluates PR curriculum and establishes Joint PR standards in collaboration with the DoD Components for formal Joint PR training, including Code of Conduct and SERE. JPRA also provides DoD Components with analytical support, technology research and integration, maintenance of databases and archives, and development of lessons learned. JPRA encourages partnerships by assisting with non-DoD agencies, multinational partners, and others, with PR-related education and training programs.
Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) is the process by which United States military assets and personnel can be used to assist in missions normally carried out by civil authorities. These missions have included: responses to natural and man-made disasters, law enforcement support, special events, and other domestic activities. A recent example of the use of DSCA is the military response to Hurricane Katrina. DSCA is the overarching guidance of how the United States military can be requested by a federal agency and the procedures that govern the actions of the military during employment.
The Deployable Operations Group (DOG) was a United States Coast Guard command that provided properly equipped, trained and organized Deployable Specialized Forces (DSF), which still exist today, to the Coast Guard, DHS, DoD and inter-agency operational and tactical commanders. Formerly headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, it was established on 20 July 2007, and was commanded by a captain and was decommissioned by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Robert Papp on 1 October 2013, although many of the units existed long before the 2007 commissioning. Upon decommissioning, the units previously assigned to the DOG were split between Coast Guard Pacific and Atlantic Area commands.
The Joint Theater Level Simulation (JTLS) is used to simulate joint, combined, and coalition civil-military operations at the operational level. Used for civil/military simulations and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) scenarios, JTLS is an interactive, computer-assisted simulation that models multi-sided air, ground, and naval resources with logistical Special Operation Forces (SOF) and intelligence support. The primary purpose of JTLS is to create a realistic environment in which agency staff can operate as they would within a real-world or operational situation. A training audience conducts a scenario or event to practice their ability to coordinate various staff functions.
The Illinois–Poland National Guard Partnership is one of 22 European partnerships that make-up the U.S. European Command State Partnership Program and one of 65 worldwide partnerships that make-up the National Guard State Partnership Program. The relationship between the Illinois National Guard and the Republic of Poland is an enduring partnership that was established in 1993. The primary focus is split between support of ISAF Operational training and co-deployment, Professional Military Education, Transformation of the Forces, Crisis Management and Response, and Defense Support of Civil Authorities.
A battle lab or battle laboratory is a capability enabled by a set of means to analyze or assess impacts that could be induced by changes in a military realm. The changes can be of any kind: equipment, technologies, organization, doctrine or changes in the environment itself.
