Photo By Master Sgt. Jeffrey Rice | Members of multiple Civil Support Teams prepare to execute active shooter response...... read more read more
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PERRY, Ga. – Civil Support Teams from the Georgia, North Carolina and the Michigan Army National Guard complete a joint active shooter exercise, along with a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) detection and mitigation training during a week-long exercise called Patriot 25 at the Guardian Centers in Perry, Georgia, March 26-27, 2025.
Georgia’s 4th CST, North Carolina’s 42nd CST, and Michigan’s 51st CST joined forces to test and increase their interoperability and cooperation by responding to scenario-based exercises for Patriot 25.
"Training with our CST counterparts from other states not only allows us to build rapport and relationships…it creates a 'want' to help situation as opposed to a 'have' to help,” said U.S. Army Capt. Juan Gonzalez, the operations officer for the 4th CST. “Additionally, we get to learn and share with one another Tactical Training Procedures and best practices that can only help us continue to improve in every aspect of our mission sets.”
In a real-world domestic environment in which a suspected weapons of mass destruction or a CBRNE threat occurs, the mission of these CSTs is to identify the hazard, test the reported material, and advise and assist state emergency management teams.
“If there really were a large-scale terrorism event, they are going to call in multiple [CST] teams,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Sara So, the commander of the 51st CST. “To have connections with other teams…it is going to be important for us to be able to successfully support the agency partners during that crisis.”
During the CBRNE training, members worked through proper handling of the situation and identified whether the threat was explosive, chemical or radiological.
The active shooter scenario required each team to locate the gunman and eliminate the threat.
Each CST can deploy within 3 hours of notification, to an incident site using its organic assigned vehicles which includes a command vehicle, an operations trailer, a communications platform, an Analytical Laboratory System vehicle (containing a full suite of analysis equipment to support the characterization of the hazard) and several general-purpose vehicles.
"It is important to integrate teams and different procedures, there are always different ways to get things accomplish,” said U.S. Army Sgt Phillip Kitchen, a survey team member with the 42nd CST. “One of our biggest strengths is being able to have access to other organizations…we are not self-dependent we have to rely on each other to accomplish the mission.”
The overall mission of a Civil Support Team is to support civil authorities at a domestic Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear high-yield Explosives (CBRNE) incident site by identifying CBRNE agents/substances, assessing current or projected consequences, advising on response measures, and assisting with appropriate requests for additional follow-on state and federal military forces.
| Date Taken: | 03.27.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 03.28.2025 14:18 |
| Story ID: | 493949 |
| Location: | PERRY, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 148 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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