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Pentagon Plans to Create Counter-WMD Terrorism Unit
The U.S. Defense Department’s latest strategy report calls for establishing a special military unit to prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Sept. 27, 2005). Portions of the Quadrennial Defense Review, scheduled to be sent to Congress on Feb. 6, have been made available to the Times. The review states that the Pentagon plans to “develop new defensive capabilities in anticipation of the continued evolution of WMD threats” such as electromagnetic pulse weapons, portable nuclear weapons, genetically engineered pathogens and new forms of chemical weapons. “The United States will have increased efforts to locate, track and tag shipments of WMD,” the report states. “There shall be a joint task force for the elimination of WMD.” The Army’s 20th Support Command is to be a major component of the task force, becoming a rapid deployment unit “to command and control WMD elimination missions by 2007,” the report says. The new task force would have several hundred troops and be equipped with aircraft. It is expected to have its own intelligence component, defense officials told the Times. “They will possess an expanded ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high value targets, globally,” according to the document. The unit will also have “greater capacity to detect, locate, and render safe WMD” (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Jan. 27).
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