We nuked another American city last month. April 23rd, to be exact. A fake terrorist group was accused of the crime, but make no mistake about it, we did it, so addicted are we to both the rush of the endorphins and our fascination with the end of times.
Twice every year, the FBI assembles the National Mission Force for Marble Challenge, a complex inter-agency test of the ability of the blackest parts of the federal government to find and “render safe” a ticking nuclear bomb. It is the domestic counterpart exercise to Vital Archer I wrote about yesterday that takes place in Canada, and a drill that has become more and more sophisticated over the years, folding in not just conventional and unconventional military assets but also scientists from the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are dozens of military and intelligence exercises, war games, conferences, trade shows, and specialty conventions happening every month — both at home and abroad, from every branch of the national security world and their affiliated civilian contractors. We’ve bookmarked a select few, but by no means all, that we’re monitoring this week, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for the unusual or the absurd, the extravagant, the publicized and the secret. If you have any to add that you think are interesting, please let us know! And tell us why you think they’re interesting, because that feedback gives us a better understanding of the kind of stories you want featured on this site. One of our core missions at Phase Zero is to create a dialogue about what is happening in the world of national security, and your interest, curiosity and hypotheses are what initiate those conversations.
More information has come in on the Invincible series of exercises, following on the Invincible Shield exercise I wrote about yesterday. Two inscrutable documents, called Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests (MIPRs), now make reference to Invisible Sentry 15, held at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. The Purchase Requests allocate more than $350,000 to ICE Corp. (Intelligence, Communications and Engineering, Inc.) to prepare the documents and supply role players for this mysterious Joint Special Operations Command war game. One senior inter-agency role player will be paid $24,005.00 to participate. That would be some retired general to "play" a CIA or White House official. Pretty sweet gig for an exercise that only lasted 10 days.
