Office of Security Technology and Assistance News

The Office of Health, Safety and Security has been a fervent supporter of advanced technologies as an effective and efficient means to greatly enhance security throughout the Department. The Office of Technology and the National Training Center (NTC) have established a strong partnership to make this vision a reality. The Office of Technology is charged with identifying, procuring, and deploying advanced security technologies throughout the complex in order to address the Design Basis Threat policy, increase protective force survivability, and to mitigate the ever increasing cost of security. A critical component of the technology deployment program is the availability of high-quality training that ensures the protective forces have the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to operate and employ these technologies in a safe and effective manner. Each year the NTC and the Office of Technology coordinate efforts to ensure that the NTC is aware of technologies slated for deployment within the complex. This formalized process enables the NTC to plan for, develop, or certify appropriate training for these technologies and make this training available to other sites deploying similar systems.

Once an evaluation of the suite of deployed technologies is completed, a decision is made which technologies are appropriate for integration into the NTC training program and facilities. The new Integrated Safety and Security Training and Evaluation Complex (ISSTEC) at the NTC provides an ideal environment well suited for security technology evaluation and training. Currently, the NTC is installing the technology and infrastructure within the ISSTEC to support training for several of the most popular technologies including Remotely Operated Weapons Systems, non-pyrotechnic breaching kits, friend versus foe identification technologies, and state-of-the-art command, control, communications and information (C3I) systems. The C3I technology, "Night Owl", was developed by the Special Technologies Laboratory and provides an interactive capability for tactical commanders that can display real time protective force positions, sensor data, and capture events for follow-on review and analysis. The Tier-3 Breaching Kit, developed by the Sandia National Laboratories, contains a full suite of mechanical breaching tools and has been delivered to operational facilities and the NTC. The NTC provided a mobile training team to train re-entry teams at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Besides providing training for security technologies themselves, the Office of Technology and the NTC are deploying technologies targeted specifically for enhancing training capabilities at the NTC. The Augmented Reality technology currently being installed in the ISSTEC is a close-quarters combat training simulator with the capability to immerse responders into actual environments with virtual adversaries that move, communicate, and shoot back. This high-tech shoot house provides a safe, realistic, and challenging environment for individual and squad sized team drills.

In addition to the above, the Office of Technology's participation as a member of the Department of Defense, Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), resulted in delivery of an Improvised Explosive Device Training Kit to the NTC for evaluation and potential future use. The kit is complete with electronic and hard copies of lesson plans and training materials. In the near future, TSWG will also provide the NTC with a Chemical and Radiological Simulant Training Kit containing both radiological and chemical warfare agent (G-agent, VX, H-series mustard) simulants for decontamination training. This Inter-Agency exchange of technology is cost-free and allows the NTC to offer an increased selection of training tools and opportunities.

The Office of Technology and the NTC will continue to work together to successfully complete technology deployment projects at the NTC. Providing the NTC with the most advanced security tools and training materials supports their primary mission to serve as the Department's Center for Security and Safety Training and provides a significant contribution to our National Security.