Guard's WMD unit to expand
By B.J. Reyes
Associated Press
The Hawai'i National Guard has received authorization to begin a pilot program to train teams that would be permanently deployed on remote Pacific islands to respond to threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, the state adjutant general, said.
The goal is to have a team in place in the U.S. territories of Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands or another island nation that would be able to respond quickly to a threat in the region, Lee told delegates Friday at a homeland security summit in Honolulu.
Response teams also would be at the disposal of Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, Lee said, noting that such response teams are only contained within the National Guard.
The authorization for the increased training was granted recently by Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard system, Lee said.
"When Lieutenant General Blum visited us a few months ago and he saw how we did homeland security, he said this is a model," Lee said. "When he talked with Admiral Fargo that beyond Hawai'i there's no such organization anywhere else in the Pacific, he gave us special authorization to increase that unit."
State officials, including Lee and Gov. Linda Lingle, say the Islands' homeland security preparedness measures have been lauded as among the best in the country.
They say the Islands' location, which often makes it an entry point into the United States from Asia and the Pacific, have forced all security agencies in Hawai'i to concentrate more heavily on such training.
The Hawai'i National Guard's weapons of mass destruction response team has 22 members. Lee said he was unsure how many more members would be added or what the financial impact would be because an evaluation still must be done on the region's needs.
Lee's announcement came on the final day of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit & Exposition, which brought together more than 600 delegates from 19 countries and territories in the region.
While events such as the summit are useful in talking strategy, Lee said the pilot program represents something tangible that Hawai'i can point to as proof of its expertise in the area of security.
"Besides just the talk and bringing everybody together, we can now train with the latest equipment on weapons of mass destruction and send teams out now to cover the other U.S. territories," he said.
Earlier Friday, Fargo stressed that security throughout the Asia-Pacific region would remain strong despite the shifting of resources.
The Pentagon this month announced plans to send 4,500 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks on a one-year tour in Iraq starting in February, with another 3,500 soldiers heading to Afghanistan in April. This week, the Pentagon alerted 390 members of the Pacific Army Reserve 411th Engineer Battalion that they could go to Iraq as soon as January.
"When we move organizations like the 25th Infantry Division to Iraq and Afghanistan, I look for ways to compensate for that," Fargo told conference delegates, adding that more air and naval forces are likely to be brought into the region to compensate for the loss of the Schofield soldiers.
"Frankly, I have tremendous resources available to me," Fargo said. "Right now, we're involved in winning the peace in Iraq. My job, and of course the job of the secretary of defense, is to take a look at the different concerns throughout the world ... and decide where we need to place forces and where we might take risks."
Lingle also noted that the departure of some 8,000 troops also will have an economic effect on the Islands and that her administration is working on proposals to deal with the effects of the deployment.
