Under the new strategy, U.S. air and naval forces will continue to improve efforts to scan and patrol approaches to the United States. Some of the moves began immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. But maritime efforts have lagged airspace measures, and even U.S. air defenses will require further improvementsto deal with potential attacks by low-flying cruise missiles and pilotless aircraft, the document notes.
The strategy draws a distinction between the "lead" role that the Pentagon intends to play in bolstering these long-established air and sea missions and the "support" role still envisioned for U.S. land operations.
Legal barriers to sending the armed forces into U.S. streets have existed for more than a century under the Posse Comitatus Act. Enacted in 1878, the law was prompted by the perceived misuse of federal troops after the Civil War to supervise elections in the former Confederate states. Over the years, the law has come to reflect a more general reluctance to involve the military in domestic law enforcement, although its provisions have been amended from time to time to allow some exceptions, including a military role in putting down insurrections, in assisting in drug interdiction work, and in providing equipment, training and advice.
Along with civil liberties groups, many senior Pentagon officials have tended to be wary of seeing troops operate on U.S. soil. Military commanders argue that their personnel are not specifically trained in domestic security, and they worry that homeland tasks could lead to serious political problems.
Still, the Pentagon has established new administrative structures in recent years in recognition of a growing military contribution to homeland defense. It set up the Northern Command in 2002 to oversee military operations in the United States. It created a new assistant secretary for homeland defense. And it designated a one-star general on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to work on the issue.
Additionally, the National Guard has been building small "civil support teams" to provide emergency assistance in the wake of a chemical, biological, nuclear or high-explosive attack. By the end of 2007, 55 of the 22-person teams are due -- at least one for each state and U.S. territory.
The new strategy notes that the Guard "is particularly well suited for civil support missions" because it is "forward deployed in 3,200 communities," exercises routinely with local law enforcement and is accustomed to dealing with communities in times of crisis. Indeed, Guard leaders have welcomed an expanded homeland security role.
But they have also argued for allowing the Guard to retain its overseas combat missions, concerned that a sole focus on civil support would undermine the Guard's ability to serve as a strategic reserve and to fight in future wars.
The new strategy calls for the development of larger sets of "modular reaction forces" to be staffed by the Guard for dealing with the aftermath of mass-casualty attacks. Officials said the composition of these forces is under discussion as part of this year's Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon-wide reassessment of missions, weapons and forces.
But the homeland defense strategy also explicitly rejects the idea of dedicating these additional Guard forces to the civil support mission, saying they will remain "dual mission in nature."
In the area of intelligence, the strategy speaks of developing "a cadre" of Pentagon terrorism specialists and of deploying "a number of them" to "interagency centers" for homeland defense and counterterrorism -- a reference to new teaming arrangements with the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies. The document notes that this represents a significant departure from the Cold War when Pentagon analysts worked mostly with the State Department and the intelligence community to combat the Soviet Union.
"The move toward a domestic intelligence capability by the military is troubling," said Gene Healy, a senior editor at the Cato Institute, a nonprofit libertarian policy research group in Washington.
"The last time the military got heavily involved in domestic surveillance, during the Vietnam War era, military intelligence kept thousands of files on Americans guilty of nothing more than opposing the war," Healy said. "I don't think we want to go down that road again."
