As these two case studies demonstrate, a capabilities-based approach to threat assessment may serve both Homeland Defense and Homeland Security organizations well by facilitating capabilities-based planning and preventing gaps in defense and preparedness capabilities. This innovative approach toward developing formalized plans for HLD and HLS may be the best approach to what looks more and more like a long war versus the threat of terrorism with shrinking distances often placing local and state authorities on the front lines. Looking at these notional Homeland Defense and Homeland Security case studies, a capabilities-based approach to contingency planning is inherently flexible and has the additional advantage of facilitating the planning process by ease of comprehension and explanation. Because of the simple nature of this method of threat assessment and capability package development, this capabilities-based approach to planning can be adapted and adopted in part or in total by any organization involved in countering terrorist threats.
The flexibility and adaptability inherent in a capabilities-based approach to planning is also true vertically within organizations. From strategic headquarters to operational agencies down to tactical departments and units, all levels within an organization can use the same planning process to formalize the passing of threat assessments, operational plans, and resourcing decisions up and down organizational leadership. Examples will show how this is true for both HLD and HLS. For Homeland Defense, NAVNORTH could complete their plan and assign responsibility for a specific threat capability to an operational headquarters like Third Fleet to counter capability N4. Then, within Third Fleet, the operational agency can further subdivide response responsibilities to specific ships and task forces. This would allow planners at all levels to share a common language for addressing threats and developing response packages that then could be passed to exercise planners to better integrate planning with exercises at every level of a military command.
A similar process of vertical integration can work for Homeland Security organizations. The Emergency Operations Center for New York City can task the FDNY to develop plans and capabilities for specific threat capabilities. Inside the FDNY, the Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness could then task fire battalions and special agencies to address specific threat actions or incident types. In this manner, each part of the organization, from the Fire Commissioner to a specific fire station or EMS unit, would be integrated in a single preparedness plan. This capabilities-based process can also assist HLS preparedness by linking contingency planning to emergency exercises wherein the response for threat capabilities is formalized and practiced at each level. As a result, this method of preparedness planning could link FDNY, NYPD, and hospitals in NYC by sharing a common threat assessment and contingency planning process.
This conceptual approach to contingency planning could provide an explicit linkage process to HLD and HLS arena for contingency planning by allowing for a sharing of planning language and methods. The existing overlap of HLS and HLD threats mean both military and civilian agencies need to formally address “what could we do about threat capability X” in some integrated fashion in order to develop a menu for decision-makers. In some cases, responding with a military capability to a specific threat or threat group will be appropriate – and in some cases it will clearly not be appropriate. As the National Security Strategy concludes, “To defeat this [terrorist] threat we must make use of every tool in our arsenal – military power, better homeland defense, law enforcement, intelligence, and vigorous efforts to cut of terrorist financing.”52 Ambiguity will continually challenge Homeland Defense and Homeland Security planning in the current strategic environment by raising the question “what is the threat” when planning to confront enemies whose composition and intent are unprecedented. The solution to this challenge demonstrated in these case studies can help bridge this seam in planning a national response to the threat of terrorism.
V. CONCLUSION
To address the challenges of the post-9/11 world, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described his way ahead by stating that the leadership of DOD had, “decided to move away from the old ‘threat-based’ strategy that had dominated our country's defense planning for nearly half a century and adopt a new ‘capabilities-based’ approach -- one that focuses less on who might threaten us, or where, and more on how we might be threatened and what is needed to deter and defend against such threats.”53 By adopting this approach both inside and outside DOD, capabilities-based planning would provide senior military decision-makers with an understandable process that has the inherent flexibility to address both Homeland Defense and Homeland Security contingency planning. Bracketing potential hostile capacities with assumptions of likelihood facilitates narrowing planning into manageable (and often affordable and acceptable) realms. Amorphous threats such as terrorism can be defined in this way and codified to enable planners to develop a list of required capabilities, authorities, and policies to counter anticipated enemy actions while being inherently flexible to changes in the strategic threat environment.