Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     When he was asked about the funding after his presentation, Campbell said he was rounding up. The funding is more like four million three hundred thousand per year. However, his office is grateful for that. He noted that for the past few decades, funding was “zero.”
“We hope to grow it,” Campbell said.
     The funding will be put toward about eight technologies, including better radiological-nuclear detectors. His office can do a lot with that small amount of funding, including transitioning the DTRA projects and commercial off-the-shelf products.
     Campbell noted that “If we’re trying to solve all the problems at once, yeah, it’s not a lot of funding. But we also recognize that … it’s enough to move it in a timeline that the services can afford. If I can have everything done today, it still may take the services two or three years before they have dollars to bring something online.”
     He continued that there are radiation detector programs that have been moving at a glacial pace that his office using the funding can help speed up with the funding. “The idea is to prime the pump, show success, then make the argument that we can do more.”
     The next priority will be education.
     Campbell said that we “actually have to have tabletop exercises where we don’t stop right after the event occurs, which seems to be the theme of a lot of ones that I’ve been at: the [bomb] goes off, ‘I guess we’ll stop, the world’s going to end.’ Now comes the question: what does a commander do two minutes after an explosion? What does he do 12 hours after an explosion? What does he do 24 hours before he starts getting the supplies from the U.S. if they can get there?”
     Richard Peterson is the director of the new radiological and nuclear defense capabilities development program. This new program falls under the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Threat Reduction and Arms Control. He said that he tries to look at the problem from a “glass half full” point of view. There is renewed emphasis and discussions at highest levels in the Office of the Secretary of Defense about the problem of whether U.S. forces can fight through a nuclear war.
     Peterson added that “A few years ago, we wouldn’t have seen this kind of verbiage in the high-level strategy documents. So, I’m taking this as a big win, and that is a positive sign.”
     His newly formed office is an indication that the radiological-nuclear protection problem isn’t being passed around the Pentagon anymore.
     Rhetoric and doctrine from potential adversaries, however, have suggested using tactical nuclear weapons as a means for area denial.
     Peterson said, “We have to have the ability to not have aerial denial be the name of the game for the weapons. We have to make that clear to our adversaries: ‘This is not going to work. Don’t bother trying.’”
    “Survivability” is a key word, but it can’t just consist of decontaminating equipment and putting weapons back in the fight. There needs to be an emphasis on the wellbeing of personnel, he said.
     What does the commander have available to him to make the decisions to go save the lives of those who can be saved, but also advance the fight? Peterson asked.
      He added that “We do not have a medical countermeasure pipeline to be able to protect our people, and that’s a big problem. … It’s a problem we’re aiming to solve over time. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
Please read Part 3 next