“Historically,” the G2 stated in a tone that was a bit too loud and overbearing for the size of the room, “the United States Army has been called upon to deal with a variety of domestic situations, ranging from disaster relief to armed rebellion. While it is impossible to predict what domestic missions the Army, and this division in particular, might be called out to perform, we can categorize these potential missions by type.”

This last statement alerted the sergeant manning the overhead projector to flip to the next slide. “What you see here is a list of missions, ranked by severity or, if you wish, intensity.” The G2 paused, giving the assembled audience an opportunity to study the list now being projected on the screen or look at the paper copy that had been included as part of their “carry away” packet. Not everyone had one of these packets. There were a number of straphangers and lower ranking minions arranged along the walls of the conference room. A few had come early enough to secure chairs. Those who hadn’t, squatted Korean style or leaned against the wall. Some had come to back up their respective commanders. Others were there simply to get out of their own offices and away from the mounds of paper work that always seemed to plague staff officers.

“We’ll start with the least controversial and most likely tasks that we would be called upon to perform and work our way up the ladder of intensity.” A new slide popped up, listing only one of the items from the previous list. “At the lowest level,” he stated, pointing at the screen, “we have emergency relief. By far this sort of activity is, from a public relations standpoint, the most attractive. The use of the armed forces during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, relief assistance following Hurricane Andrew, or the search and rescue effort after Mount Saint Helens erupted are but a handful of examples of this sort of mission. In each case the nature and amount of military effort varied. In most emergency relief taskings the armed forces are required to provide logistical support to replace or supplement a damaged civilian infrastructure, as we did in response to Andrew. Sometimes it’s our specialized equipment and communications, as in search and rescue, that are needed. In the case of the San Francisco earthquake, the skills of Army engineers were required when it was decided to stop the spreading fires by blowing up buildings to create a firebreak. In almost all disasters in which the armed forces were involved, the military has played a key role in the maintenance of law and order. In a few instances, such as the forest fires that ravaged the west several years back, all that we were called upon to provide was bulk manpower and transportation.