U.S. Needs Better Terrorism Defenses at Home, Panel Says

With two dozen nations holding deadly chemical and biological arsenals, the Pentagon needs to shift some of its resources from waging major wars abroad to defending against terrorist attacks that could kill thousands of Americans at home, a congressionally chartered panel has recommended.

To address growing threats from renegade nations and disaffected domestic groups alike, the military needs to expand its role to include some traditionally civilian areas of responsibility--such as border control, disaster response and coordination of intelligence-gathering, the National Defense Panel says in a report due for release Monday.

The panel proposes setting up a “Homeland Defense Command” under the National Guard that could guide the military’s response on these issues and help organize the patchwork overlapping responsibilities of various military and civilian agencies.

Without a quick change in the Pentagon’s focus, in a decade “the military might be superbly prepared to fight the [Iraqi] Republican Guard, but very ill-prepared for the these very real kinds of challenges,” one panel member, who asked to remain unidentified, said Friday.

The nine-member panel, made up of retired military officers and experts, was charged by Congress last year with advising on needed strategies for 2010 and beyond. It concludes that that what has long been considered the military’s major strategic challenge--to be prepared to wage two big regional wars in rapid succession--is becoming a “low-probability scenario.”

Yet the U.S. is increasingly vulnerable to weapons that are in the hands of smaller nations and renegade groups. These adversaries will increasingly be equipped to deliver chemical and biological weapons, launch cruise and ballistic missiles, and use high-tech equipment to disable computer and communication networks that have become the national lifeline.

The U.S. has already suffered deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the federal building in Oklahoma City.

“But what if the next Saddam infiltrated a number of [terrorist] teams into the country, striking the New York City subway, and then [announced] that they had people in many other places as well?” one panel member asked.

In those circumstances, he said, the government would need the kind of huge response that would require the military as well as civilian agencies.

The new organization might take a role in such diverse areas as developing anti-terrorist tactics and equipment, national missile defense, civil defense medical treatment, hazard detection, anti-narcotics efforts and even immigration control. Panel members believe that traditional limits on the military’s role in domestic affairs should be observed, but they also believe that the new threats may require a broader response that the military can help provide.

“The world is becoming a smaller place, where more destructive weapons are in the hands of more people,” a panel member said. “And that might require a more comprehensive response.”

In public remarks last month, Philip A. Odeen, the panel’s chairman, warned of the risks of smaller-scale attacks on the United States, including from ballistic missiles armed with chemical or biological weapons.

“There’s been very little attention paid” to such problems, he said. And he said there is a “huge organizational problem” caused by the “rat nest of people involved” in any response to an attack on the U.S.

Top Pentagon officials, beginning with Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who appointed the panel members, have increasingly stressed the risks from the attacks of terrorists. But it is unclear how they, or Congress, would respond to any proposal that might shift important prerogatives from civilian groups to the military.

The defense panel, which was set up last year to render an independent view, is to deliver its report to Cohen on Monday. He is scheduled to present the report--and his recommendations for action--to Congress in mid-December.

Four of the panel’s members are retired generals and admirals, and the remainder are civilian defense experts. Odeen is president and chief executive of BDM International, a defense consulting firm.

The panel also found a wide shift in the global economy and political landscape that will necessitate a broad shift in military needs. And it recommends that the Pentagon immediately start spending an additional $5 billion to $10 billion a year to plan and develop new weapons.

The report notes that as the years pass, the military will be able to rely less on its far-flung naval bases as the site for advance forces because allies have closed U.S. bases and because they are no longer near some of the regions the U.S. may need to defend.

Military planners need to develop strategies to deliver military force to landlocked locations, such as central Asia, which have vast oil reserves yet are far from naval bases.

Planners also face the problem of fighting wars in rapidly populating Third World cities, where many U.S. military strengths are of marginal value. The report recommends opening new military training centers where the services can jointly develop weapons and tactics to meet these challenges.

The report also applauds Cohen’s proposals for two additional rounds of base closings to generate savings to pay for new weaponry.