National Guard announces new interstate “homeland response force”
The National Guard has announced the creation of eight new “homeland response force units� to be established in 2012. An article from the American Forces Press Service states that this is part of a “restructuring of the nation’s chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosive consequence management enterprise.� These units will be assigned to eight different interstate regions, and will be able to “cross state lines when needed� for “locating and extracting victims from a contaminated environment, performing mass patient/casualty decontamination, and providing medical treatment as necessary to stabilize patients for evacuation.�