From 2007 through the present day, CAW developed and conducted a series of assessment, training, and exercise events with the goal of bringing together diverse local, state, and federal response agencies in order to establish a coordinated response plan to address criminal and terrorist incidents occurring on oil and gas platforms off the California coast. The Offshore Platform and Island Security and Response (OPLEX) Initiative was developed in response to concerns by the Santa Barbara and Ventura County Sheriff Departments over the lack of planning and coordination relating to incidents occurring on offshore oil and gas platforms and islands in the area.

The OPLEX Initiative is a multi-phase and cyclical effort to improve coordination and emergency response and management capabilities in response to an emergency on an oil and gas platform or island off the coast of California through the following activities:

2007: In April of 2007, CAW conducted an Oil Platform Terrorism Response Roundtable, in order to determine the jurisdictional challenges relating to criminal or terrorist activities on an offshore platform and the subsequent response. The participants were provided with an overview of California offshore platform locations and operations, and the discussed four scenarios involving incidents on an offshore facility. This roundtable discussion resulted in a strong desire for follow-up events to address the issues, including oil platform orientations for responders, and emergency response tabletop exercise and, ultimately, a full-scale tactical and operational level response exercise.

2008: In October of 2008, CAW conducted a series of orientation visits to offshore platforms, in which first response personnel visited operational platforms off the coast of California and received extensive guided

2011: In April of 2011, CAW hosted a delegation from the Royal Thai Naval Special Warfare Command in a Subject Matter Expertise Exchange that focused on the work CAW has conducted in Southern California to enhance the safety, security, and response capabilities of regional emergency response and management agencies. Officials from Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties also participated in the exchange, which included an orientation and site familiarization visit to Platform Grace.

Since 2007, CAW has partnered with Oxnard Harbor District (OHD) to conduct a training and exercise program focused on improving the capability of port personnel and regional public safety organizations to mitigate, respond to, and recover from the effects of an emergency at the Port of Hueneme. This exercise series has included the participation of OHD staff and port personnel; Facility Security Officers (FSO); terminal operators; city and county fire, emergency medical services, and law enforcement agencies; specialized Coast Guard, Navy, and National Guard emergency management and response teams; and state and federal agencies that would respond to an incident at the port. The Coastal Trident Exercise Series is a multi-phased and cyclical effort that has reinforced cooperation and coordination between Oxnard Harbor District and adjacent local, state, and federal response agencies and port stakeholders through the following activities: 2007: 24 agencies and organizations participated in Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and Emergency Management (EM) training and a port security tabletop exercise (TTX) that included the port’s FSOs and EOC staff. 2008: 26 agencies and organizations participated in EOC and EM training and a port security command post exercise (CPX) that focused on a shipboard fire and resulted in a simulated evacuation of the port. 2009: 40 agencies and organizations participated in a policy-level TTX and port emergency full-scale exercise (FSE). The TTX addressed both a non-compliant emergency entry to the port by a ship on fire and the request by a cruise ship to enter the port and disembark passengers affected by the outbreak of a pandemic influenza. The FSE continued the non-compliant port entry vignette and added to it elements of narcotics trafficking, undocumented passengers and cargo, and terrorism. 2010: 24 agencies and organizations participated in a Port Security and Emergency Response Seminar that covered the basic principles of EOC operations and EM. 2011: In March, the CAW and OHD conducted a full-scale port security exercise that focused on the regional response to the attempted smuggling of illicit radioactive material. Exercise activities included specialized training by the Department of Energy on radiological incident response and live events will focused on the effectiveness of field-level response operations, Unified Command Post coordination operations, and Harbor District EOC activation.

From 2007 through 2011, CAW developed and conducted a series of training and exercise events under a Congressional program, in partnership with the Maine Emergency Management Agency and the Commonwealth of Virginia, Office of Commonwealth Preparedness. The East Coast Initiative (ECI) was designed to enhance the capabilities to coordinate an integrated regional response to a maritime terrorist attack involving the use of weapons of mass destruction, for the States of Maine and Virginia. The ECI program was a multi-phase and cyclical effort to improve coordination and emergency response and management capabilities following an incident in the maritime environment of the East Coast through the following activities: ECI-Maine 2007/Waldo Responder was the Maine component of the initiative and focused on Maine’s detection, interdiction, and response capabilities in order to increase the security of Maine’s critical military assets, ports, commercial fishing, shipping, and ferry services. The Waldo Responder 2007 exercise consisted of a Unified Command tabletop and three-day full-scale exercise, including participation of 300 personnel from 50 agencies operating at 11 venues, during which responders evaluated their response plans and capabilities following a simulated terrorist attack aboard a ship, using a chemical weapons to create a mass casualty incident. ECI-Virginia 2007 was the first in a three-phase program designed to enhance the detection, interdiction, and response capabilities in order to increase the security of Virginia’s critical military assets, defense industrial assets and maritime environment, including its ports, commercial shipping, and other critical infrastructure. ECI-Virginia 2007 was conducted as a tabletop exercise that focused on the role of intelligence flow and information sharing between federal agencies and the state. ECI-Virginia 2008 was a functional exercise that built upon the lessons learned from the 2007 tabletop exercise, as part of a three-phase progression towards a full-scale exercise. ECI-Virginia 2008 tested the ability of a wide variety of stakeholders, including the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, Virginia National Guard, Virginia Fusion Center, Virginia Modeling Analysis and Simulation Center, and other public and private entity stakeholders, to respond to and mitigate a major transportation security incident. Hampton Roads Full-Scale Exercise (HRFSE) 2011 represents the culmination of the East Coast Initiative in the exercise of emergency management plans, systems, and response capabilities of local ,state, and regional agencies in the maritime domain. This three-day full-scale exercise was designed to demonstrate and improve communication and coordination between Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Virginia State, and local law enforcement and first response agencies following a series of coordinated attacks against the nation’s critical defense and industrial infrastructure in the Hampton Roads area.

In August of 2009, CAW developed and conducted a tabletop exercise for the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Honolulu and the Area Maritime Security Committee to focus on recovery of the maritime transportation system following a terrorist attack. During the workshop, twenty-seven participants assessed the ability of the 2009 Area Maritime Security Salvage Response Plan to support a coordinated response to a maritime transportation system disruption, following the bombing of a container ship that resulted in the blocking of the mouth of Honolulu Harbor, closing the port for an estimated 2 to 3 months.

In 2008 and 2009, CAW partnered with the U.S. Army’s 196th Infantry Brigade Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Team (WMD-CST) Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-yield Explosives Enhanced Response Force Package (CERF-P Training Division to develop and conduct a series of exercises that would focus on the command and control (C2) and operational issues surrounding a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction in multiple Hawaiian harbors. The KOH exercise series was a multi-phase and cyclical effort to improve coordination and emergency response and management capabilities following a WMD attack in a Hawaiian port through the following activities: 2008: KOH 2008 served as the State of Hawaii’s annual WMD exercise and brought together local, state, and federal government response agencies and four National Guard CSTs to exercise their ability to respond to a CBRNE incident in a maritime environment. Exercise activities consisted of a tabletop exercise that familiarized participants with roles and responsibilities of diverse participating agencies, a tabletop exercise that explored the C2 issues posed by a CBRNE threat in a maritime environment, and a situational training exercise that included radiation training and shipboard operations training in personal protective equipment. 2009: KOH 2009 built upon the 2008 exercise and consisted of a field training exercise that increased the complexity of the operational environment and advanced the working relationship of the participating organizations to deal with a hazardous materials threat in a Hawaiian port.

In 2009, CAW partnered with Pistris to research and develop updated tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) for U.S. Coast Guard boat crews tasked with inserting assault forces on noncompliant vessels and other appropriate targets of interest. Collaborators on this project assessed and evaluated current TTPs in use with the intent of improving techniques and developing additional solutions to better prepare and respond to potential maritime terrorism attacks and threats.

From April through September of 2008, CAW partnered with U.S. Coast Guard Sector Seattle and the Port of Seattle Police Department to develop and conduct a series of training and exercise events to validate the preparedness of the Puget Sound region to respond to a major incident, such as a marine casualty or mass casualty. The Marine Tactical and Rescue Operations (MTARO) exercise was designed to evaluate the ability of the participants to communicate, coordinate, and operate within the Incident Command System to return the damaged transportation system to normal operations. This was accomplished through a series of events that included a preparatory tabletop and command post exercise, a full-scale exercise, a law enforcement vehicle tactical recovery, a U.S. Coast Guard maritime rescue operation, and a recovery tabletop exercise.

From 2004 through 2008, CAW developed and conducted a series of training and exercise events under a Congressional program to support Homeland Defense and Homeland Security activities. The Asymmetric Warfare Initiative (AWI)-North program was developed to consolidate a major part of this effort in the Pacific Northwest. The AWI-North series of events were a combination of field training, tabletop and full-scale exercises focused on activities across the interfaces of the Department of Defense, law enforcement, first responder, and command and coordination centers, especially where participants’ responsibilities crossed hierarchal, organizational, and jurisdictional boundaries. The AWI-North series was a multi-phase and cyclical effort to facilitate interagency training and experimentation; demonstration of new and innovative concepts of operation and technologies; and development of solutions to interagency integration of tactics, techniques, and procedures in the Pacific Northwest through the following activities: 2004: In August and October 2004, CAW conducted the first phase of the AWI-North program, which included a preparatory tabletop exercise followed by combined full-scale and simulation components. During the tabletop exercise, planners and participants gathered to discuss the interagency planning, communications, coordination, and processes required to respond to a complex terrorist attack in the Seattle and Tacoma area. The full-scale exercise allowed participants to put the interagency capabilities to the test against a variety of complex scenario-driven experiments, which included suspicious vessels, mass casualty incidents, destruction of critical infrastructure, and weapons of mass destruction. 2005: In December of 2005, CAW built upon the AWI-04N exercise events with a tabletop and functional exercise that reinforced implementation of the Incident Command System and prepared participants for a full-scale exercise within the next year. During the AWI-05N exercise, participants operated in their functional areas as first responders, incident commanders, unified command staff, or emergency operations center staff to communicate and coordinate field operations, simulated by real-time computer simulation, across jurisdictional and geographic borders. 2006: In May of 2006, CAW continued the AWI series with a full-scale exercise, conducted as a component of U.S. Northern Command’s Ardent Sentry 2006, which further developed the capabilities of response agencies in the Pacific Northwest to prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist activities and natural disasters. The AWI-06N exercise involved the participation of nearly 1,200 participants from 40 agencies, in a dual natural disaster and terrorism scenario. Live play at the Port of Tacoma included a hazardous materials response aboard a container terminal, interception and open-water boarding of a boat containing valuable intelligence, police SWAT operations, and the physical evacuations of a number of port terminals. A computer-simulated earthquake stimulated response actions and information-sharing relative to casualty evacuation and the destruction of critical fuel and transportation infrastructure. 2007: In July 0f 2007, AWI-07N was conducted in parallel with the Washington National Guard Exercise Evergreen Sentry 2007 and focused on terrorism in the maritime environment. The exercise consisted of several preparatory training events, followed by a series of full-scale exercises that combined live and simulated components, and concluded with a tabletop exercise that focused on a transition to the recovery phase of operations. AWI-07N included five major exercise events, which incorporated overlapping and inter-related terrorist-initiated crises: the hijacking of the Pierce County Anderson Island ferry in the Puget Sound, an RPG and small arms attack at the Port of Tacoma, a terrorist attack on the Navy fuel farm at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, an Alien Migrant Interdiction Operation at the Port of Seattle, and a subsequent civil disturbance at U.S. Coast Guard Station Seattle. 2008: In September of 2008, a modified tabletop exercise was conducted to enable participating agencies to take a step back from the complexity of previous AWI-series exercise, close identified gaps, and allow “lessons observed” to become “lessons learned.” AWI-08N was conducted in the Pierce County Emergency Operations Center and simulated the detonation of a radiological dispersal device, prompting activation of the port area evacuation plans. During the exercise, response agencies considered citizen evacuation and shelter-in-place, critical infrastructure protection, weapons of mass destruction and hazardous materials response and decontamination, security in a hazardous environment, return to normalcy, decontamination and cleanup, and execution of a regional mutual support plan.

From 2003 through 2005, CAW developed and conducted a series of training and exercise events under a Congressional program to support Homeland Defense and Homeland Security activities. The Asymmetric Warfare Initiative (AWI)-South program was developed to consolidate a major part of this effort in Southern California. The AWI-South series of events were a combination of field training, tabletop and full-scale exercises focused on activities across the interfaces of the Department of Defense, law enforcement, first responder, and command and coordination centers, especially where participants’ responsibilities crossed hierarchal, organizational, and jurisdictional boundaries. The AWI-South series was a multi-phase and cyclical effort to facilitate interagency training and experimentation; demonstration of new and innovative concepts of operation and technologies; and development of solutions to interagency integration of tactics, techniques, and procedures in the Pacific Northwest through the following activities: 2003: In September and November of 2003, CAW conducted the first phase of the AWI-South program, which included two tabletop exercises and a multi-day full-scale exercise that involved a terrorist attack, using weapons of mass destruction, on the dual-purpose military and civilian Port of Hueneme. More than 500 personnel from 29 local, state, and federal agencies participated in AWI-03, which incorporated a series of overlapping terrorist-generated crises: the demolition of a toxic chemical storage tank; detonation of a radiological dispersal device (RDD); taking of hostages by terrorists; an attack on a U.S. Navy ship by small boats; and the killing of law enforcement officers and hostages. 2004: In August of 2004, nearly 1,200 personnel from 60 agencies participated in AWI-04S, conducted as a component of U.S. Northern Command’s Determined Promise 2004, which focused on terrorism in the maritime environment. AWI-04S consisted of multiple preparatory training events, followed by a complex full-scale exercise that included live and simulated components. The scenario incorporated four operational phases, during which first responders, the Los Angeles and Ventura County Incident Command staffs, the Joint Investigative Operations Center, and local and state emergency operations centers were exposed to several terrorist-generated crises. The live play involved the coordinated responses to the detonation of a RDD in the Port of Los Angeles, identification of search for additional containerized weapons, the explosion of a cargo container in Ventura County causing mass casualties, and simultaneous assaults on three suspected land and water-borne terrorist locations. 2005: In September of 2005, CAW conducted AWI-05S and Exercise Bay Shield 2005 (EBS), providing a series of multi-agency training and evaluation opportunities to develop and refine policies and procedures for a transportation security incident in a maritime terrorism scenario. EBS/AWI-05S consisted of a number of pre-exercise training events, a tabletop exercise, a command post exercise, and a surface deployment exercise. These events were set in a maritime terrorism scenario that required threat characterization, multi-agency search and rescue operations, mass decontamination operations, security in a chemically contaminated environment, flight operations, and establishment of a unified tactical incident command center.

In April of 2005, CAW conducted Unified Independence (UI) 2005 for the California National Guard’s 9th Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Civil Support Team (CST) in order to improve coordination between response agencies in responding to and investigating a terrorist attack in a maritime environment involving the use of WMD. UI-05 brought together over 300 participants from local, state, and federal government agencies to respond to a simulated chemical release by terrorists within one of our nation’s ports. This six-hour exercise required participants to establish a command structure and operational response that could effectively characterize threat explosives and WMD agents, coordinate multi-agency search and rescue, treat and decontaminate injured patients, conduct law enforcement and security operations in a chemically contaminated environment, and fly simulated chemical agents from the incident site to remote laboratories.

In 2005, CAW partnered with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard to develop, plan, and execute an end-to-end demonstration of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). The objective of the Gulf Coast MDA Initiative was to examine the use of national-level command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) architecture – including a swimmer detection system, a mobile remote sensor vehicle equipped with electro-optical and infrared video cameras, and a remotely controlled unmanned surface vessel – fused with local port sensors for Homeland Security and Homeland Defense application. Culminating in a multi-agency response exercise, the Gulf Coast MDA Initiative demonstrated the initial detection and tracking of suspicious activities well outside the Continental United States, followed by the persistent surveillance of likely maritime threats as they transited the approaches to U.S. ports.

In December of 2005, CAW developed and conducted a tabletop exercise for Hawaii State Civil Defense and the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources to increase the ability of local, state, and federal agencies to respond to and recover from an act of terrorism within the Lahaina Harbor. The Ho’malu O Lahaina exercise focused on the role of the Department of Land and Natural Resources in the protection of and law enforcement within the harbor and issues related to maritime security and emergency response that might arise in a given emergency situation. Discussions were specifically designed to address interagency coordination, cooperation, and communication, awareness of jurisdictional authorities, and available response capabilities.

In October of 2005, CAW developed and conducted a command post exercise for Hawaii State Civil Defense and the State of Hawaii Department of Transportation (DOT) to address communication and notification procedures and elements of coordination, resource availability, and response in a simulated maritime terrorism environment. Pale Awa II satisfied the Area Maritime Security Plan’s annual exercise requirement and focused on a simulated agricultural terrorism event and suspicious cargo that necessitated an increase in the Maritime Security level. The objective of this exercise was to evaluate the effectiveness of the DOT response plans, focusing on the notification process and contact information. It also provided a valuable opportunity for interagency cooperation and coordination in the region.