New leader types may help prevent Katrina-like chaos

The Defense Department is grooming a new type of commander to coordinate the military response to domestic disasters, hoping to save lives by avoiding the chaos that plagued the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort.

The officers, called dual-status commanders, would be able to lead both active-duty and National Guard troops.

It's a power that requires special training and authority because of legal restrictions on the use of the armed forces on U.S. soil.

No one commander had that authority in the aftermath of Katrina. Military and civilian experts say the lack of coordination contributed to nightmarish delays, duplications and gaps in the rescue effort.

"It was just like a solid wall was between the two entities," said Georgia National Guard Col. Michael Scholes, who was part of the Katrina response.

Top Defense Department officials think dual-status commanders are the key to reducing at least some of those failures.

"We're going to be able to conduct disaster response operations on a large scale much more efficiently and effectively than we have in the past," said Paul Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense.

Dual-status commanders will provide a "unity of effort that is going to save lives on a large scale," Stockton said in an interview.

Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, killing more than 1,600 people and causing more than $40 billion in property damage.

An unprecedented 70,000 military personnel poured into the region to help, but active-duty and Guard troops often didn't know what the other was doing, said William Banks, a professor at the Syracuse University law school who studied the response.

The evacuation of the Louisiana Superdome was delayed by 24 hours because of a lack of coordination among the Louisiana National Guard, active-duty troops and state and federal officials, Banks wrote in a 2006 critique published in the Mississippi College Law Review.

By contrast, Scholes said, active-duty and Guard troops worked together seamlessly during the 2004 G8 Summit on Sea Island, Ga., where a dual-status commander oversaw the military presence. Scholes also was part of that effort.

The dual-status concept is simple but the execution is not. The active-duty military is limited in what it can do at home. The National Guard in each state is in charge of helping civilian authorities during emergencies.

Active-duty and National Guard troops also have distinctly different chains of command.

The president is commander-in-chief of active-duty troops, while the Guard reports through a state chain of command leading to the governor.

A dual-status commander would straddle that divide. With the approval of state and federal officials, he or she would get temporary authority to command both types of troops and report up both chains of command.

The U.S. Northern Command, with headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., began training dual-status commanders last year.

The goal is to have at least one officer in each of the 50 states and in four U.S. territories qualified and ready to be a dual-status commander on a moment's notice, said Adm. James Winnefeld, commander of Northern Command.