The multiple teams of vehicles and foot-mobile forces deploy throughout the city, resources in hand, with clear routes and mission objectives. All has been planned, disseminated, and coordinated. The release and detonation has been timed and is synchronized to the precise minute during rush hour traffic. In an instant, Washington, D.C. is inundated with explosions, chemical indications, and mass confusion throughout surface and subsurface population centers. Police, fire, and medical emergency forces spread throughout the city in immediate response to the multiple locations but are quickly overwhelmed with thousands of calls for help, massive rubble sites, and vague intelligence reports that the attack was only the first wave. Centers of government, Presidential authority, and support facilities become centrally focused to internal problems and recovery. Contingency plans drawn on paper are activated to include employment of military forces throughout the area. These plans, however, are slow to respond and act in a coherent manner with appropriate focus in the right areas at the right times. Historically, the Marine Corps' contingency mission for those forces stationed in the National Capitol Region focused on civil disturbance and riot control capabilities. In recent years, this mission has grown to include providing forces for consequence management, disaster response, and site security. However, Marine contingency forces located at Marine Barracks, Washington, responsible for augmenting security in the nation's capitol are inadequately prepared to perform contingency missions due to a lack of clear mission goals, focused training objectives, and inadequate gear sets.


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