IV. Concept of operations.(management of internal security)

A. Mission

The overall Lead Federal Agency, in conjunction with the lead agencies for crisis and consequence management response, and State and local authorities where appropriate, will notify, activate, deploy and employ Federal resources in response to a threat or act of terrorism. Operations will be conducted in accordance with statutory authorities and applicable plans and procedures, as modified by the policy guidelines established in PDD-39 and PDD-62. The overall LFA will continue operations until the crisis is resolved. Operations under the CONPLAN will then stand down, while operations under other Federal plans may continue to assist State and local governments with recovery.

B. Command and Control

Command and control of a terrorist threat or incident is a critical function that demands a unified framework for the preparation and execution of plans and orders. Emergency response organizations at all levels of government may manage command and control activities somewhat differently depending on the organization's history, the complexity of the crisis, and their capabilities and resources. Management of Federal, State and local response actions must, therefore, reflect an inherent flexibility in order to effectively address the entire spectrum of capabilities and resources across the United States. The resulting challenge is to integrate the different types of management systems and approaches utilized by all levels of government into a comprehensive and unified response to meet the unique needs and requirements of each incident.

1. Consequence Management

State and local consequence management organizations are generally structured to respond to an incident scene using a modular, functionally-oriented ICS that can be tailored to the kind, size and management needs of the incident. ICS is employed to organize and unify multiple disciplines with multi-jurisdictional responsibilities on-scene under one functional organization. State and local emergency operations plans generally establish direction and control procedures for their agencies' response to disaster situations. The organization's staff is built from a "top-down" approach with responsibility and authority placed initially with an Incident Commander who determines which local resources will be deployed. In many States, State law or local jurisdiction ordinances will identify by organizational position the person(s) that will be responsible for serving as the incident commander. In most cases, the incident commander will come from the State or local organization that has primary responsibility for managing the emergency situation.

When the magnitude of a crisis exceeds the capabilities and resources of the local incident commander or multiple jurisdictions become involved in order to resolve the crisis situation, the ICS command function can readily evolve into a Unified Command (see Figure 1). Under Unified Command, a multi-agency command post is established incorporating officials from agencies with jurisdictional responsibility at the incident scene. Multiple agency resources and personnel will then be integrated into the ICS as the single overall response management structure at the incident scene.