Security Control Measures: Terrorist Groups and Extremist Groups Essay Example

The target of terrorist groups and extremist groups is always to cause massive destruction and harm to the people and the environment to pose a great threat in the society. The groups are often fully equipped with war ammunitions which helps them to fight and cause the destructions. Without these weapons, the extremists and terrorist groups could not be a great threat to any nation or rather the defense forces in many nations. The weapons they use in terrorist attacks is what defines their extremism power (Mazzone, 2013). From ancient days to date, the terrorist groups have been improvising on the weapons they use to match and fight back their opponents.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The advancement of the war weapons has been backed by the political and industrial revolution which facilitated the innovation of better war weapons. Guns were initially the only fighting weapons used by either the armies or terrorists (Mazzone, 2013). However, CBRN is used by the terrorists to cause massive destruction during the war. CBRN weapons refer to the weapons that are created with Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear materials which causes great distractions when used by the terrorists (Nagy et al., 2013). The CBRN weapons include conventional bombs like pipe bombs, improved blast weapons like dirty bombs and the improvised explosive materials like fuel oil-fertilizer mixture. Similarly, the CBRN can be non-weaponized in that the weapons being used are traditionally based like the use of Dangerous goods to cause distractions (Nagy et al., 2013). Such may include the use of Hazardous Materials like poisonous foods and contaminated crops and livestock which when used, causes great losses and destruction.

The use of CBRN can be either intentional or accidental (Bland, 2014). Accidental CBRN cases occur due to natural or human and technological errors which may cause great distractions. Some of the accidental incidents include spills, outbreaks of diseases, accidental leakages or releases of explosive chemicals. On the other hand, terrorist acts and criminal acts are intentional CBRN as they are caused by full intentions and knowledge. In either of the incidents, there are both long-term and short-term effects posed by the incidents. Apparently, in many cases, CBRN have mass causalities, environmental distractions, and loss of lives (Bland, 2014). Therefore, the use of CBRN by terrorist groups has been a great threat to the whole world and humankind.

Weapons that target to affect people through the use of disease-causing microorganisms like viruses, prions, and nucleic acids are referred to as biological weapons when the biological weapons, the target is always to cause harm to human beings, animals and plants. These agents have a high multiplying ability which enables them to increase over time to cause more distractions. Remarkably, the diseases caused by the biological weapons are propelled by the interaction between the environmental and the host. The agents are classified based on their taxonomy units like bacteria, fungi, and viruses (Bland, 2014). These agents can further be classified based on their features like lethality, infectivity, the incubation period, pathogenicity, virulence, transmission mechanism and the contagiousness of the biological agent. Furthermore, the stability of the agent is factored in to ensure the selected agents can survive and outstanding all the environmental factors to be viable.

Contrarily, Chemical weapons are toxic chemical weapons which cause an extreme distraction, death or permanent harm in the place they are applied. The weapons are regarded as chemical weapons because of their toxicity effectiveness. The primary goal of chemical weapon is to cause toxic effects when applied or used. Hence the weapons made of chemicals as explosives, propellants, obscurants, and incendiaries are not categorized as chemical weapons since here they are not used to toxify. When such as tear gas, hydrogen cyanide and phosgene are used for hostel purpose, then they are regarded as chemical weapons. Therefore, chemical weapons can be categorized basing the toxicity effects they cause such as harassing, incapacitating and lethal effects when they are used.

Similarly, the weapons can either be classified based on the body effects they cause to individuals. As such, they may be either, nerve agents meaning they cause systemic effects to the skin or lungs, respiratory effect causing lung damages when inhaled and blister agents which are absorbed through the skin. The effects of chemical weapons can be persistent or non-persistent. With advanced effects, some of the chemical agents cause obstacles and long-term effects on the human body. Non-persistent agents are often used to dispatch groups of people in causalities where volatile substances are used in the chemical form.

Historically, CBRN agents have been used from the early days. According to Hersman Murdock & Van (2016), Smallpox which is a form of biological weapon was used to weaken the America army in the colonization of south and North America. In the subsequent years, CBRN agents have been widely used positively and negatively by many nations across the world. Consequently, many attacks use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to use massive death and destructions in events of war or attacks. Such the cases of WMD witnessed include the Bossier City, La attack in 2002 and the World Trade Center attack in the United States in 1993 (Hersman et al., 2016).

Bossier City houses the Barksdale Air Force Base which has main wings of the Air Force Global Strike Command, the Second Bomb Wing, Air Force Reserve Command's 307th Wing and the Eighth Air Force(Hersman et al., 2016). Many weapons of mass destruction are housed in respective bases in the camp. These military wings also serve as the control units for the missiles and bombs combat as they are the major and global units. The whole Barksdale military airfield stands on a 22,000 acreage of land. Historically, the base has been a major control panel in the United States military. It also works jointly with other world military units to provide proper security. For instance, the Eight B-52 aircraft unit worked jointly with NATO to aid in the Kosovo Crisis in 1999 to end the terror attack. Unfortunately, the 8th Air Force Base was attacked in March 2002. Reportedly, fire from unknown origin sparked off causing a mass distraction in the Barksdale base in Bossier City (Rowman., 2016). The weapons which were housed in the base exploded despite attempts by the fire extinguishing arms to put off the fire. Luckily, the fire did not spread to the other wings since they were located at a far distance from the area of the scene. From the incident, many losses were witnessed as a result of the exposition of the CBRN weapons.

From the incident, we can note that the CBRN weapons cause the massive distraction. Similarly, terrorist attacks cause such distractions and massive death when they occur. To prevent such occurrences, various strategies must be put in place to ensure the acts are combated. CBRN agents can be used by terrorist to undermine the military unit that is placed so that to attack the nation. For instance, they may use the incapacitating agents and lethal agents which contain chemical toxins to attack people so that they may feel weak. When the agents affect the people, they may take the opportunity to robe and cause massive destruction.

However, such issues can be prevented through sustainable strategies which counter them. Firstly, the intelligence system can be improved so that such cases can be traced before they expand or rather spread. This can be attained through organizational strategies which will aim at developing training and operational units that focus on equipping the trainees with the standard procedures of combating such attacks. Technical equipment like the respirators which detects traces of chemical agents can be installed so that such cases can be traced and prevented. The health services personnel should also be equipped with viable skills that can enable them to immediately arrest occurrence of the chemical agents' events. This will include the establishment of early warning systems in hospitals which may help in identifying those who are affected and provide effective treatment to prevent further effects of the chemical agents.

Conclusion

Since the military agencies act as the custodian of the general security, it should work closely with other departments like the health department and the general public so as to coordinate the incidents. With the pre-coordination, treatment and security control measures can be put in place since important evidence will be collected. Above all the measures, policies and procedures that regulate the production of the CBRN agents should be put into practice based on the international regulatory standards to ensure minimal production of the agents. By so doing, the incidents of terrorist attacks using the CBRN and WMD can be reduced.

References

Bland, S. A. (2014). Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Casualty Management Principles. In Conflict and Catastrophe Medicine (pp. 747-770). Springer, London.

Hersman, R. K., Murdock, C., & Van, S. (2016). The Evolving US Nuclear Narrative: Communicating the Rationale for the Role and Value of US Nuclear Weapons, 1989 to Today. Rowman & Littlefield.

Kristensen, H. M., & Norris, R. S. (2014). US nuclear forces, 2016. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 70(1), 85-93.

Mazzone, A. (2013). The Use of CBRN Weapons by Non-State Terrorists. Global Security Studies, 4(4).

Nagy, A., Mkrtchyan, L., & Van Der Meer, K. (2013, May). A CBRN detection framework using fuzzy logic. In ISCRAM.