As part of its new job as the lead U.S. military organization managing responses to possible crises involving weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon’s top special operations headquarters is running a dedicated office to gather intelligence and information about these potential threats. Since President George W. Bush’s administration made the case for its invasion of Iraq, “WMDs” has become something of a dirty word, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns about hostile foreign powers and other groups getting hold such arms, including nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons. There’s a certain alphabet soup to the arrangement, with U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Counter-Weapons of Mass Destruction-Fusion Center (CWMD-FC) being situated somewhere in the greater Washington, D.C. area, known to the U.S. military as the National Capital Region (NCR), which is already home to another secretive special operations counter-terrorism element, sometimes referred to as SOCOM-NCR. The mission of “countering” these deadly weapons can be somewhat confusing, as well.

The fusion center’s job is to provide “a persistent focus on the weapons of mass destruction problem set,” Ken McGraw, a spokesman for SOCOM, explained in an Email. An extension of the work the command does at its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, the personnel actively work with their counterparts across the rest of the U.S. military, the Intelligence Community, and law enforcement agencies, among others, as well as foreign governments, he added. From this description, the fusion center’s role sounds utterly banal. But coordinating the Pentagon’s strategy to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which is essentially equal arms control and direct action, is a complicated and multi-faceted mission.

SOCEUR A US special operator in protective gear maneuvers during a training exercise involving a chemical or biological threat.

Preventing countries or other hostile actors from acquiring or transferring WMDs involves monitoring the movement and flow of weapons, precursor materials, and funding, helping to secure and destroy these items when necessary, and making sure foreign governments abide by various international agreements, such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time, SOCOM has to take the lead if the U.S. military ends up responding to related crises as diverse as a weapon accidently going off at home or abroad or there is a need to neutralize a hostile WMD capability. It’s an amazingly complex set of problems and that’s part of the reason why President Barack Obama’s administration, as one of its final official acts, shifted the job from U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to SOCOM in December 2016. Critics were concerned that STRATCOM, which manages America’s nuclear deterrent, strategic intelligence, and military space activities, was either unwilling or unable to give countering WMDs the attention it deserved. STRATCOM “rarely invested the necessary political and intellectual capital,” one anonymous U.S. defense official told The Washington Post when it first reported on the shift in December 2016. As a whole, they said the U.S. military gave WMD threats an “overall low sense of priority as compared to its other missions.”

US Army A US Army special forces soldier cuts their way through a metal barrier with a rotary saw during a training exercise.

An additional factor was the difficulty in coordinating the activities of a myriad number of U.S. military elements charged with the mission, but not necessarily working directly together. These include the U.S. Army’s 20th Support Command and 21st Ordnance Company, the latter dedicated specifically to defusing WMDs, and the U.S. Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, among others. There is also the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a separate agency with the Department of Defense focused on responding to WMD threats. Many of these units and offices have individual agreements with other U.S. government agencies to better mesh their respective activities, too. According to a Memorandum of Understanding The War Zone obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, U.S. Special Operations Command North, which oversees special operations missions in North America, has had a contract expert working within the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate since 2015.

NORTHCOM via FOIA

In part, SOCOM’s fusion center has the job of making sure these various parties are working together smoothly. With U.S. special operations forces themselves heavily committed, with some suggesting they are close to their breaking point organizationally under the strain of near constant operations, it’s possible that SOCOM could find struggling with many of the same problems. The command does have a long-standing relationship with the counter-WMD mission itself, though. One of the “core activities” of U.S. special operations forces is supporting U.S. government efforts to stem the proliferation of WMDs, according to SOCOM’s website.

SOCEUR US special operators wearing protective gear with a self-contained breathing system carry a simulated casualty during a training exercise.