Q&A: Colonel Leslie Smith
Written by Ted McKenna
Bringing CBRN Communities Together,
for Training and Response
Colonel Leslie Smith
Chief of Chemical
Commandant, CBRN School
U.S. Army
Colonel Smith is the U.S. Army’s 25th chief of chemical and the commandant of the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) School.
He returned to Fort Leonard Wood after serving as the G3, 20th Support Command (CBRNE), Edgewood, Md., where he was responsible for the operations and training of the soldiers and civilians of the 20th SUPCOM, engaged in eliminating weapons of mass destruction and CBRNE threats and effects worldwide. From 2005 to 2007, Smith commanded 3rd Chemical Brigade, responsible for the professional military education for the CBRN School, basic combat training, transportation wheeled vehicle AIT, and post wide reception operations. Other assignments have included deputy division chief, Full Dimensional Protection Division, G8, Army Staff, the Pentagon; commander, 83rd Chemical Battalion, Fort Polk, La.; nonproliferation planner, Biological Weapons Convention Protocol in the International Negotiations Directorate, J5, the Joint Staff, the Pentagon; operations officer and subsequently executive officer, 23rd Chemical Battalion, Camp Carroll, Korea; future readiness officer and subsequently company grade assignments officer, PERSCOM, Alexandria, Va.; division chemical staff officer, division artillery chemical officer and 21st chemical company commander, Fort Bragg, N.C.
His military education includes the National War College, Army Command and General Staff College, Combined Arms and Services Staff School, and basic and advanced chemical officer courses. He holds a bachelor’s in accounting from Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Ga.; a master’s in public administration from Central Michigan University; and master’s in national strategy and policy from the National Defense University.
Awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (3 OLC), Army Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Global War on Terror Expeditionary and Service Medals, the Senior Parachutist’s Badge and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Army Staff Identification Badges.
Q: How does the Chemical Corps look today compared to a few years ago?
A: The Chemical Corps has dramatically changed from pre-2001 to today. We have moved from a Cold War mentality to one that is focused on all types of hazards—not only chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear, but also toxic industrial chemicals and [other] materials that threaten our nation and world.
We, along with the other centers and schools of training and doctrine command, have reorganized along the centers of excellence. What that means is at the Maneuver Support Center here at Fort Leonard, a lot of our organization and doctrine requirements have moved to the center level. I’m primarily responsible for training, leader development and personnel. But we have a great synergy with the other elements that are there. From what it used to be a few years ago to today, the organization has become smaller, but we have the ability to reach into the other elements of the Maneuver Support Center, which also makes it very powerful because we can reach across the military police and engineer and chemical branches to get the best practices and mission sets from all of those schools.
Q: With the personnel growth in the overall Army, will the Chemical Corps see any of that increase? If so, will there be additional units or just a filling out of the existing command structure?
A: In every unit in the Army, there are chemical soldiers, or dragon soldiers, as we call them. As a unit grows, if that be the brigade combat team, which is the core of our formations, they have soldiers assigned to those elements. From company to battalion to brigade, there are soldiers assigned, so as they grow, our corps grows.
Specifically from the chemical unit perspective, we don’t have any growth of chemical companies or battalions as such. We are doing a reorganization of all of our units to make them more multifunctional. So instead of just having a Fox reconnaissance unit or a biological detection unit, we’re standing up units that we call combat support companies, which have a capability to have biological detection, chemical reconnaissance and decontamination all in the same unit. That gives the combat commander a lot of flexibility and capability across the forces spectrum.
Q: Regarding growth in the Chemical Corps, how do you go about recruiting? Do soldiers just drop into slots as they open up or do you find yourself actively recruiting soldiers to join you?
A: There is a two-star recruiting command, currently commanded by Major General Donald Campbell. Earlier this year, we gave the then commander, Major General Thomas Bostick, a tour of what we do here at the Maneuver Support Center.
That command goes out and recruits soldiers for the Active Force National Guard and Army Reserve. Say for example you need 100 chemical soldiers. For every one they recruit, they have to contact about 100 people.
Once they get here, they go to basic combat training; most of it is down here at Fort Leonard Wood. But after they finish that, they do advanced individual training, which is also conducted here.
Q: What is the corps’ role in the RDT&E projects related to CBRN, and how much of your budget is procurement-related?
A: The way I see our role in RDT&E is that based on where we see the threats today and tomorrow, along with the joint program executive officer for Chemical and Biological Defense, Brigadier General Jess Scarbrough, along with the director of the Joint Requirements Office, and the J8, Admiral Macy, we as a collective group determine what those longer term projects are going to be, and then I as a joint combat developer for experimentation, come up with different projects of things we need to do in the future. So based on all those things, that is how those dollars come together. I don’t necessarily control the RDT&E dollars; the JPEO really controls those along with the different locations that are coming out with the earlier projects. But we give them the ideas of things of where we need to go, based on what we see and what we project in the future.
Q: On the procurement side, how does the budget work for you?
A: It’s similar. The money does not necessarily come to us. The public law back in the early 1990s established the Chemical Biological Defense Program, so everything we do is born joint. So the J8 establishes the requirements for all of the services, and the services participate as part of a capabilities board, where we identify what the requirements are. Let’s say, for example, the Stryker NBCRV—that was one of the capabilities we needed—to replace the aging Fox reconnaissance system. So we as the DoD decided on what that system was going to be. For the Army, it ends up being the next iteration reconnaissance system for the long term for us.
Q: As far as the budgeting for FY10, I know numbers have not been released, but do you have any indication of whether you would see any up or down with the funding in the near term?
A: I think the base budget—I can probably speak from that perspective— is probably going to remain flat over the next few years. As you know, the Army has grown because of the supplemental budgets. We don’t see the supplemental budgets continuing over the next several years, but I think our goal is to make sure we get those key requirements into the base budget so it will continue to be funded. The key thing is deciding what things we can do and what risks we can take. DoD has to do that across the board, and that is probably our biggest challenge. We not only as a Chemical Corps but as the Army and DoD in general.
Q: You talked about the supplemental funding. Has the Chemical Corps received the fair share of supplementals to do the kind of work you’ve been tasked to do?
A: I don’t know what you mean by fair share, but we have received supplemental funding to do the things the Army and nation has required us to do.
Q: What are your key technology programs and acquisition programs that you’d like to emphasize?
A: For us, and this is the Army perspective, it is figuring out how to get a better dismounted CBRN dismounted reconnaissance system. We have some systems that are mounted, but we have to figure out a way for soldiers to have that same type of kit. We are developing that by taking some of those lessons learned that we’ve had from the WMD civil support teams—those skills and capabilities that they have in the states and figuring out how to develop that same type of package for deploying units. That’s probably my biggest acquisition program.
Also, as you take the Stryker and other type of systems we have, we want to figure out how to miniaturize those capabilities so it’s lighter on the vehicles, less maintenance required, and they have multiuse capabilities for those uses. It’s figuring out how one vehicle can be used for CBRN for that one platform. We also need to fix decontamination for the Army and the Department of Defense. We are still using some of the same technologies as 20 years ago. We have to do better and are working hard in the community to fix it.
Q: How has the Stryker NBC vehicle performed to date, and are you satisfied with it? What are the major improvements since its introduction, and are there any enhancements either planned or desired but unfunded that you’d really like to move forward with?
A: We’re satisfied with the Stryker reconnaissance vehicle. It’s done what we’ve asked it to do. There have been product improvements that they’ve made to all of them, but it’s not NBC RV specifically, just overall improvements, such as the RPG armor.
The system has performed well. But for us, the key thing is making sure that all the components that are there—from the chemical, biological and radiological perspective—that they’re smaller, more efficient and easier to repair. That helps the soldiers out; that helps the maintenance folks out. That’s probably the biggest thing. Farther along the line, as these systems and the new capabilities develop, we want to figure out how we can get them into the system or into the components quicker, versus the sometimes laborious acquisition process.
Q: How do you address the planning and preparation for a CBRN-type incident from a conventional force—let’s say during the Iraq invasion—versus what might happen from some of the asymmetric threats that are global in nature?
A: For all of our courses—what we call professional military education—we have structured the courses to deal with those multiple threats. That covers everything from the major combat operations on one side, to supporting civilian ops on the other side. Regardless of what you call it, the dragon or chemical soldiers have to deal with what happens.
If you take the major combat operations—offense-defense, stability and support operations—they have be prepared to deal with the threat. Soldiers in country have dealt with those situations— it’s not widely advertised, maybe—but that’s why we’re trying to get that dismounted capability out to the field. Here at the CBRN School, we do train our soldiers on that. The soldiers today, captains and lieutenants and noncommissioned officers [NCOs], sergeants first class and staff sergeants, leave with the hazmat technician level of training.
What that means is that they’re trained at the highest level to deal with hazardous materials and deal with the same things that the other CBRN first responders do in the United States. So they are DoD-certified, and we are the only Army facility that is DoDcertified to grant these certificates. So they take a test; it’s on an international database, so they can go anywhere in the country or the world where they are recognized to be certified as a hazmat technician.
The goal is to get our young soldiers, sergeants and below, trained to the next level below that, which is operations. Right now, they get the awareness level of training. The new soldiers that are in advanced individual training get that level of training. That tells them essentially to do things like read placards and understand hazard levels. The next level of training teaches the guys how to deal with an accident. The next level up is how to direct other people. That’s what the captains and lieutenants are leaving the courses with. They are very well trained in dealing with the operations on what we call the domestic and foreign consequent piece.
The next step is to get them to understand how to integrate into the nonproliferation arena as young people and the jobs done from that, along with the counter proliferation, along with the consequence management.
I think we’ve done a good job of the consequent management piece, and some of the parts of the counter proliferation piece, but we’re really pushing how to get them to understand about how to deal with those things from the nonproliferation part, with the cooperation threat reduction and treaties and negotiation. That’s probably the biggest thing of how we’ve been focusing on those things. The other thing is bringing in those subject matter experts. It’s not folks from the schoolhouse. Folks from the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center come out and instruct our students on hazardous materials, explosives and the chemistry of explosives, because those guys are the experts. The same thing with folks from Defense Threat Reduction Agency, to talk about different capabilities. Every quarter we have folks come in for the joint senior leaders course, which is sponsored by the JRO, where we bring in higher-level speakers to bring other folks up to speed on the combating WMD topics.
Q: So it sounds like you’re doing a great job of not just teaching them the functions of their jobs, but teaching them the ramifications and the bigger picture.
A: That’s the education process, of teaching them not what to think, but how to think. Because from what we grew up with and the future, it will be a whole lot different than that. I don’t know what the future holds for them, but as long as we teach them how to think, then they can deal with whatever the situation is.
Q: Do you use distance learning techniques or is most of it classroom-based face-to-face learning there at the school?
A: Yes and yes. We have sent mobile training teams out to locations to help units get trained. Sometimes, although not our preferred method, it may be easier for us to send a team to Germany or Korea than it is to bring folks back. But the goal is to bring as many people back here, and when they come back for the advanced courses or the basic NCO courses, or senior-level courses, it’s important that they get a chance to see all the parts.
All those things said, we do have distance learning courses now on the CBRN knowledge network. You can go in and take basic chemistry courses, and it’s not easy. Or a basic bio or radiological course, along with links to other courses that FEMA has or the DTRA has. It’s not necessarily just us that have the courses; we want to be able to reach out to anyone that has good distance learning courses. Along with that, our goal is to have as many of our resident courses we have taught onto that same network so that they can go back to the instruction they received without having to keep all the paper copies of everything.
Q: What are the challenges in simulating CBRN events without endangering trainees but still giving them that adrenaline rush of what they’re actually dealing with?
A: Simulating a CBRN attack is not easy to do because we have to use simulants to replicate everything you need for the training event. We also need more robust training aids that replicate the same type of thing. So we have the ability to replicate a bio attack without actually spraying a biological agent.
We also need to have the same thing to replicate a chemical and radiological attack so that the systems will respond and do the things they need to do without endangering the soldiers. One thing I want to highlight that we also have here is the CBRN decontaminant training facility, which is DoD’s only toxic agent training facility. Every soldier that comes through here—and every sailor, airman and Marine that also trains here—goes through the CDTF. There is a live agent we mix here, very small levels that are under control and in an over-pressurized environment, and they deal with that situation in a facility. They get a chance to see: “Yes, your masked worked. Yes, the decontamination worked. Yes, I know how to find live chemical agent, killed biological agent and radiation sources with my equipment.” Basically it’s a confidence-building event for them.
Q: Is the training that an active duty soldier receives similar to what would be given to Reserve and National Guard units?
A: Yes. We can’t develop something that the active components do that the Reserve and National Guard cannot do. The only difference is how the different components are received. While the active part might be one training block, the Reserve and National Guard might be two or three sessions. They are receiving the same thing; they come out with the same level of hazardous material certification. That’s our focus always, to give the same level of training.
Q: What is the corps’ role in the event of a domestic CBRN incident?
A: You may have heard of the WMD civil support team. All of those soldiers and airmen are trained right here. There’s also the consequence management response force—we train the soldiers that participate as part of those events. We do all the individual training for those units. There’s also the 20th Support Command and 48th Chemical Brigade, for which we do all the individual entry-level soldier training as well. My challenge is making sure we are delivering the right type of capability at the right time to the right unit. Because there are competing demands, and we have to figure out what is the best thing to do for the Army and really for DoD, and how we partner better with the other services, and figuring out what is the best capability to provide.
Q: Any final thoughts—anything we didn’t cover?
A: The biggest thing for me as a commandant is figuring out how we bring our communities together, whether it be the Chemical Materials Agency as they destroy the legacy chemical munitions, to the ECBC as they develop the capabilities that we need for the future, along with the DTRA, U.S. Army Nuclear and Chemical Agency, as they provide standards for testing and training in CBRN equipment, the other services and components. Figuring out how we deliver the right capability for the nation is probably my biggest goal. Because at the end of the day, DoD and the nation expects us to have the right capability at the right time to defend the nation, whether that be in the United States or overseas. I think we do a good job, but I think we can always do better.
Last, I’d like to say that this year in the Army is the year of the NCO, and many of the things I’ve mentioned could not have been done without all the great work of not only the Army NCOs, but also NCOs serving in the Marines, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard in defense of the nation. We would not be the Army that we are today and I would not be the colonel that I am today without the NCOs that we have in our formations. ♦