DUGWAY, Utah - The Missouri National Guard's 7th Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team recently spent two weeks training at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground.
The unit, based at Cooper Armory in Jefferson City, completed the 100-hour Advanced Chemical/Biological Course, levels 1 and 2, which consisted of seven days of classroom and laboratory education and three days of field training.
The team's mission is to assess suspected or known terrorist threats, advise civilian authorities of appropriate responses, and assist local emergency responders with follow-on forces in incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive weapons of mass destruction.
The 22-person active Guard unit of Army and Air National Guard members must be capable of sending out an advance party team within 90 minutes at all times to investigate potential threats that can range from mass sickness to mysterious white powders to unidentified contaminations on the land or water.
The team often trains with civilian first responders, and brought a pair of battalion fire chiefs – Ken Plante, of Lee's Summit, and Mike Jenkins, of North Kansas City, Mo. – along to also receive the training.
The purpose of the training was for the Guardsmen to familiarize themselves with chemical and biological warfare agents.
"The class gives you the most realistic training you can get without violating any treaties," said 1st Sgt. Christopher Lemley, the unit's first sergeant. "The instructors from the Dugway Special Programs Division Chemical Defense Mission Support Facility trained us on a variety of clandestine labs where you could potentially see products being made much like you would find in a sophisticated lab."
The team also was able to meet its annual requirements for attending a national training center – the team had not been to Dugway since 2004 – and air-loading their equipment.
The Guard members loaded their vehicles, trailers and gear onto a C-17 Globemaster III and two C-130 Hercules provided by the Missouri, New York and Mississippi Air National Guards, which transported them to and from the training.
"We can go to a facility that is designed to simulate Airload Operations and meet the requirement, but this way the team members get the most hands-on, realistic training available," said Lemley, who lives in Columbia.
Of the field training exercises, the first dealt with working in confined space, the second focused on lab identification and the third emphasized identifying public health effects of a potential biological release.
The team also learned to spot and identify explosives while training at Dugway.
"The ability to identify early on the presence of potential explosive threats is invaluable," Lemley said.
This will likely be the last national training event with the team for Maj. Joey Schmitz, the unit's deputy commander, who is moving on April 1 to become the personnel officer for 70th Troop Command at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis.
Schmitz, who has been the team's deputy commander for more than two years, said he is sad to leave the team, but will be glad to return to his wife and home in Arnold after serving for more than five years in Jefferson City.
"I've enjoyed the mission of the 7th Civil Support Team, working with the first responders and being in an operational unit," Schmitz said. "It's the reason I applied for the position was to be part of an operational team."
At Dugway, Schmitz, who is in the command section and normally works solely in the unit's tactical operations center, got the chance to perform the reconnaissance section's function of donning a Hazmat suit and making an entry into the threat area.
"It was an excellent way to get that different perspective," he said. "Always being in the tactical operation center, suiting up was very eye opening."
Schmitz said the overall training at Dugway was very beneficial for himself and the team.
"I personally gained a lot of knowledge about biological and chemical agent production – to be able to recognize immediately in pre cursors whether there could be illicit behavior," Schmitz said. "We learned a lot about the situational awareness of what was going on."
Schmitz said the best moments of his tenure with the team have been supporting the 2011 World Series in St. Louis and the 2012 MLB All-Star Game in Kansas City, as well as responding to support several real-world incidents and working with first responders throughout Missouri.
"Being on the team definitely highlights the way the Missouri National Guard works," Schmitz said. "The Guard offers support to local authorities and first responders without taking over the situation. We show up and say, 'This is what we can do, how can we help?'"
For Sgt. Zachary Davenport, a reconnaissance section team member, this was his first national level training with the team.
"I now have a better understanding of how we work," Davenport said of the training. "I was able to see everybody in motion and get more hands-on experience that gave me a better insight into what the team does rather than just theory."
Davenport said one of the highlights of the training was being able to get feedback from instructors who actually work with the detection equipment the team uses.
"They do the studies of the equipment to see how effective it is for us," said Davenport, who lives in Ashland. "I got to talk to them one-on-one and that was one of the better parts of the training to me. I'm still learning it, so it's all new to me, but that seemed to be the thing that stuck out in my mind."
Two other positives for Davenport were team-building time with the members of his new unit and participating in the air load.
"I had never done it before and it was an eye-opening experience, but it was good," he said.
Lemley said the Guard members on the team not only received a lot of valuable training during the two weeks, but also learned a lot about the roots of the Army's chemical and biological programs.
"One of the most valuable things we take away when we go to a site such as Dugway is the historical value of how long the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear enterprise has been going and the strides that have been made in the program," he said. "We were able to see some of the facilities where they've made chemical and biological stimulants that are used in preparing us defensively."