29th Infantry Division prepared to 'save lives now' for Inauguration

"JTF-29's mission will be to 'save lives now,' if we're called," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Epperly of Operation Valiant Shepherd. Epperly is the G-3 Chief Operations Officer of the 29th Infantry Division of the Virginia National Guard

Being prepared to "save lives now," is the reason Joint Task Force 29, a collection of National Guard units from 16 states, mobilized into forward-support positions before Tuesday's 56th Presidential Inauguration. JTF-29 represents the latest transformation of National Guard assets in its 372-year history.

To ensure a safe and secure Inauguration, Epperly said JTF-29 worked with National Capital Region authorities; the governors of Maryland and Virginia; and the mayor of
Washington, D.C. "We've based (the Inauguration) on the lessons learned in Hurricane Katrina, when both Mississippi and Louisiana had very large percentages of their National Guard troops deployed overseas on combat missions and help from around the region was needed. The 38th Division of the Indiana National Guard went to Mississippi and the 36th Division from Texas went to help in Louisiana," he said.

Past regional responses to events have been ad hoc. But, the attacks of 9-11 and the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina pointed to the need for a more thoughtful approach to preparing for catastrophic events.

Operation Valiant Shepherd is the latest development. It provides pre-positioned assets for a conditioned response.

To prepare for its role as a joint task force with regional responsibilities, the 29th Infantry Division actively trained for more than two years. Its exercises included participating in Vital Guardian in 2006, exercises Hurricane Howard and Vigilant Guard in 2007 and staff exercises during its annual training last year. A recent overseas simulation
exercise in Japan, Yama Sakura 55, reinforced the 29th ID's ability to assist civil authorities and friendly forces in a contingent military mission.

During this time, the 29th ID also trained and deployed troops for Task Force Falcon as the command element to the Kosovo mission and combat elements to support operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom.

"This is our first real-world mission. But, establishing this joint task force is not really a 'new' concept," Epperly said. "But, we look at this joint task force from a different viewpoint. 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina gave us a new perspective on the threat assessment for the National Capital Region. We determined we needed a rapidly scalable response in the wake of a significant incident. This task force provides us the flexibility to package our response to meet the size of any support requirement."

"Ours is a stability-support role," Epperly continued, "which means our responsibility is to support crowd control, traffic management, security, and humanitarian relief efforts as needed.

"For years, there has been the argument that if you were training for war, then you couldn't be training for a DSCA (Defense Support to Civil Authorities) mission," Epperly
said. "This mission is validation that you can do both."

"You cannot replicate reality. This real-world mission has a size and a sense of urgency, a focus that cannot be replicated in training. Our exercises have set the conditions
and changed the mindset and we now have leaders experienced in both the wartime and DSCA environments in training and the real world."