Customs Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 12 Border States. This support included several helicopters and over 1,500 National Guardsmen for over

six months.

In contributing to homeland defense, the Department provides forces to conduct traditional military missions under extraordinary circumstances, such as the defense of the nation's airspace, ballistic missile defense, security of military and key national installations, and port and maritime security.

CONUS Air Defense

The Air National Guard has historically been involved in the air defense or air

sovereignty mission, and comprise over 80% of the aircrews flying air sovereignty missions. On continuous alert, Air National Guard aircraft monitor and interdict threats as varied as terrorism, foreign military aircraft incursions, illegal immigration, and drug trafficking.

While the Air National Guard has been successful in sustaining a high operational tempo, the level of demand since September 11 has remained high. In the intervening 20 months, more than 15,000 airmen of the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and Active Air Force have flown over 29,000 fighter, tanker and airborne early warning sorties to protect our skies.

Port and Maritime Security

The Navy and Coast Guard are the two Services that predominantly perform the maritime security mission. The Navy supports the Coast Guard in its port and coastal

security tasks through an inter-Service agreement. This is a strong relationship that involves sharing people, equipment, information, and intelligence. The establishment of U.S. Northern Command is not expected to fundamentally alter how the Navy and Coast Guard divide the domestic and maritime security mission.

The Coast Guard has defended America's coasts for over 200 years, performing a range of missions, to include: maritime law enforcement and safety, national defense, maritime mobility, and maritime environmental protection. Its mission suite focuses on civil and law enforcement tasks in U.S. coastal and navigable waters. In contrast, the Navy focuses more on deterring and preempting military targets well forward of U.S.

coasts.

The Reserve components already play a prominent role in the maritime security mission. The Coast Guard is the lead service in performing port security, with port security units staffed primarily with reserve personnel. Today, over 4,000 Coast Guard Reserve personnel are mobilized in support of this Homeland Defense mission.

Civil Support

As the federal government has become more engaged in aiding local government response to natural disasters and other emergencies, the military's involvement has grown proportionally and will likely continue to be strong. Although the civil support function is to assist other Lead Federal Agencies, this mission is critical to the safety and security of the American public. Our Reserve forces, especially the National Guard, have

historically been the first military forces to arrive in support of local civil response

efforts.

Events Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction

Because of the growing threat from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and

high-yield explosive weapons, incident management capabilities are critically important. There have been substantial efforts in recent years to increase the capabilities in the

Reserve components to respond to domestic terrorist incidents involving weapons of

mass destruction.

Thirty-two National Guard WMD Civil Support Teams have been fielded and all are now certified as being operationally ready. Twenty-five Army Reserve chemical units have been cross-trained and equipped to perform domestic casualty decontamination, and three Army Reserve chemical reconnaissance units have been trained and equipped to perform nuclear, biological, and chemical reconnaissance for domestic incidents. A substantial amount of the aerial spraying and firefighting capabilities in the Air Force reside in the Reserve component, and the Coast Guard Reserve provides both specialized port-security elements (for detection and interdiction) and environmental hazard response strike teams that may be useful in chemical or biological incidents.

CONCLUSION

Today, we have over 220,000 National Guard and Reserve men and women supporting Operations Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. They are performing force protection and security duties here in the United States, flying refueling missions over central Asia, and are on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, in response to Secretary Ridge's request to the Governors to support Operation

Liberty Shield, over 2,700 Army and Air National Guardsmen were activated under state control to protect critical assets of national significance in their states.

The Total Force policy and our integration efforts of the past decade are paying great rewards today. On little or no notice, America's National Guard and Reserve have been "ready to roll." To this day, their enthusiasm for the Global War on Terrorism remains high. They are in it for the long haul. We are judiciously managing the force to ensure fair and equitable treatment of our Reserve component members, but the bottom line is they are committed and capable warriors in this war on terrorism.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Anderson, General.

General ANDERSON. On behalf of General Eberhart, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and Commander of the U.S. Northern Command, we thank you for this opportunity to represent the outstanding young men and women of NORAD and USNORTHCOM and to tell you about our efforts to protect and defend our homeland.

I, too, would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide a written statement for the record.

While I will devote the majority of my remarks to the U.S. Northern Command, before I do I would like to take a moment to just a say a few words about NORAD.

NORAD has proved to be a resilient organization that has adapted to counter ever-changing threats over the past 45 years. One of the factors contributing to the success has been our relationship with the Canadian armed forces, which today has never been stronger. For Operation Noble Eagle, together we have flown over 29,000 sorties without incident. This includes fighters as well as airborne early warning and tanker aircraft. With the Air Guard and Reserves flying over 75 percent of our fighter and tanker sorties, we simply could not complete our mission without the men and women of the Reserve component. NORAD remains ready to defend against any aerospace threat.

USNORTHCOM is a product of transformation. Everything about us, from our mission, to our organization, to the way we have members of the National Guard and Coast Guard on our staff, reflects the way that the Department of Defense is moving toward countering the threats of the 21st century.

Our missions are homeland defense and military assistance to civil authorities. While these missions are not new, placing them under a single command to ensure unity of command and unity of effort with a unity of purpose is new.

USNORTHCOM is a U.S. unified combatant command. We have all of the responsibilities and authorities of other combatant commands when it comes to national defense and protecting the interests of the United States and her allies in our area of responsibility.

However, one thing that makes us different from other combatant commands is that our homeland is in our area of responsibility. For the first time since George Washington and the Continental Army, the United States has a military command that focuses solely on homeland defense in support to homeland security, USNORTHCOM.

Although we are a small command with very few permanently assigned forces, we are confident we can get the forces we need to do our mission. We have combatant command authority over a standing joint force headquarters with two operational joint task forces, one to support counterdrug activities and the other to support civil authorities for weapons of mass destruction consequence management. However, through well-established procedures, we can quickly draw upon the total force to expand our assigned forces to respond to any contingency within our assigned area of responsibility.