HOMELAND DEFENSE

Homeland Defense

Introduction

Homeland Defense is defined as a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the country, reduce country's vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from the attacks that do occur. The purpose of homeland defense is to protect against and mitigate the effects of the invasion or attack on a sovereign territory, domestic population, and protection of critical infrastructure. It is closely linked to the issues of defense and national security, this term most often used to describe efforts to strengthen the domestic security of the country in the period following the terrorist attacks. Several countries have executed the National Strategy for Homeland Defense.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is generally operated in every country. It has the prime objective to defeat threats at a safe distance from the homeland. The homeland is a unique operational environment due to the need to achieve unity of effort within a constitutionally mandated relationship among federal and state governments as it impacts on military operations. Homeland defense operations are often described as those in which DOD is the federal agency with lead responsibility. Whereas this distinction is fairly definite in missions such as air defense, which is often accomplished by the ANG assets transitioning between federal and state status through the use of “standing orders,” it is not so straightforward when applied to missions such as prevention of or response to, critical infrastructure, or attacks in cyberspace, where clear procedural employment in a federal status has not been founded. Executing these missions will require consideration of the laws, emergency management capabilities and processes, and existing inter-state or territory arrangements established within each of the individual states and territories. (David & James 2002)

Homeland Defense Objectives

Homeland defense objectives are: to identify the threat, determine opponents of the program or ...