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The sort of DSCA provided in 2017 will likely be needed again

• DoD support included collaboration with FEMA and the commonwealth on functions normally conducted by state and local actors, the aggressive use of authorities, and adaptation of doctrinal machinery not normally observed in DSCA responses.
• DoD can improve the speed of future responses by helping improve and harden Puerto Rico National Guard and USAR disaster-response capabilities in Puerto Rico, mobilizing key capabilities immediately prior to hurricane landfall, and improving procedures for establishing earlier SA and a common operational picture (COP).
• U.S. Northern Command should work with FEMA to develop an operational concept for how FEMA would, at the request of state and local authorities, temporarily stand in and fulfill the functions of state and local emergency management organizations that have been shattered in a future disaster.
• Doctrine for DSCA command and control (C2), early SA and development of a COP, and more robust employment of the dual-status commander and U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) in disaster responses should be reviewed and updated based on the lessons of Hurricane Maria.
• Although the burden of developing more-robust, more-resilient emergency preparedness and disaster-response capabilities will fall mainly on local and federal civilian efforts — and DoD does not normally invest in capabilities whose sole purpose is support for DSCA requirements — DoD might consider making selective, judicious, and high-leverage investments to harden and enhance Army National Guard (ARNG) and USAR capabilities for future disaster responses in distant, insular settings.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) in September 2017 sparked a whole-of-government response involving local, state, federal, civilian, and military responders. From late September through mid-November 2017, U.S. Army North (USARNORTH) was the joint force land component commander for Department of Defense (DoD) support to civilian disaster-response operations in the wake of the two hurricanes. USARNORTH directed RAND Arroyo Center to answer a series of questions about that support, ranging from how well the DoD response fit with the National Response Framework (NRF), doctrine, authorities, and templates to relationships among responding organizations to possible improvements in such things as speed of response and situational awareness (SA). While it is reasonably unlikely that both local and state response capabilities would simultaneously be incapacitated in future such incidents, Puerto Rico and USVI would still be relatively isolated, and a complex catastrophe could again present many of the same challenges. A strategic concept for defense support of civil authorities (DSCA) needs to center on policy decisions on the number, types, and sizes of overlapping incidents that will serve as pacing functions for determining future response capabilities and who will provide them.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Background on the 2017 Hurricane Season

• Chapter Three

  The Framework for Federal Responses

• Chapter Four

  Overview of the Response to Hurricane Maria

• Chapter Five

  DSCA Command-and-Control Arrangements: Doctrine and Practice During Hurricane Maria

• Chapter Six

  Mission Assignments

• Chapter Seven

  DSCA Training for Effective Command and Control

• Chapter Eight

  Public Affairs and Strategic Communication

• Chapter Nine

  Cross-Cutting Questions

• Chapter Ten

  Conclusions

• Appendix A

  Chronology of the 2017 Hurricane Season

• Appendix B

  Public Affairs and Strategic Communication Data