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Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, federal and state governments invested billions of dollars on preparedness efforts within the first responder community to respond to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) events. As time passed, there was greater realization that WMD incidents were less of a threat than conventional firearms and explosives. The intricate, often unrealistic, CBRN scenarios were replaced with more representative and realistic examples of attacks on the civilian populace utilizing readily available materials and weapons. These attacks were occurring overseas in countries with internal or external conflicts and in the Afghanistan and Iraq war theaters.
These events, commonly utilizing a variety of violent modalities, came to be categorized as complex coordinated terrorist attacks (CCTA) – a bit of a misnomer, as these events, at least domestically, are not always coordinated and not always committed by “terrorists”. CCTA has an excellent ‘ring’ to it, but exactly how can jurisdictions, agencies and communities really prepare for this general, nondescript threat? The term CCTA is just too broad and open-ended; a better descriptor for the various threats we face is the term “high threat”…
