U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency - DTRA

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is an agency within the United States Department of Defense and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives). DTRA's main functions are threat reduction, threat control, combat support, and technology development. The agency is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. DTRA (and its co-located partner organizations the SCC-WMD and SJFHQ-E) employ approximately 2,000 civilians and uniformed service members at more than a dozen permanent locations around the world. The majority of personnel are at DTRA headquarters on Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Approximately 15% of the workforce is located on Kirtland Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and the Nevada National Security Site (formerly called the Nevada Test Site), where they do testing and support the U.S. military's nuclear mission. Another 15% of the workforce are stationed in Germany, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, Kenya, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. DTRA also has liaisons with all of the U.S. military’s Combatant Commands, the National Guard Bureau, the FBI and other U.S. government interagency partners.
 DTRA was officially established on October 1, 1998, by consolidating several DoD organizations, including the Defense Special Weapons Agency (successor to the Defense Nuclear Agency) and the On-Site Inspection Agency as a result of the 1997 Defense Reform Initiative. The Defense Technology Security Administration and the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense were also incorporated into the new agency.
In 2005, the Secretary of Defense made the decision to designate the Commander, United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) as the lead Combatant Command for the integration and synchronization of DoD’s Combating WMD efforts in support of U.S. government objectives. To fill this requirement, the USSTRATCOM Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (SCC-WMD) was co-located with DTRA. That responsibility was moved from USSTRATCOM over to U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), with the transition of responsibility wrapping up in early 2017.

In 2012, the Joint Elimination Coordination Element was reorganized, renamed the Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Elimination (SJFHQ-E) of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and relocated to the DTRA/SCC-WMD headquarters on Fort Belvoir. This centralized the DoD's Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction operations, a move recommended in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.
On September 30, 2016, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency (JIDA) became part of DTRA and was renamed the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization in accordance with the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In Section 1532 of the NDAA, Congress directed the DoD to move JIDA to a military department or under an existing defense agency.
According to the DTRA/SCC-WMD/SJFHQ-E Strategic Plan for 2016–2020, the three organizations' shared mission is to "Safeguard the United States and its allies from global WMD threats by integrating, synchronizing, and providing expertise, technologies, and capabilities.


As always, the artworks feturing the insignia are available via my “Military Insignia” galleries from FineArt America and RedBubble. You can just follow the links in the article to get to the corresponding galleries.

To active duty or reserve military personnel, veterans and their family members: I grant an explicit permission to download the above images to be used for non-profit/non-commercial and charitable causes, benefiting troops and their families, as well as for non-commercial internal duty-specific purposes, such as unit website design, training materials and presentations.

The above information provided in part by Wikipedia, The Institute of Heraldry, Global Security, and the official websites of the corresponding units and formations.

On-Site Inspection Agency - OSIA

On January 15, 1988, President Ronald Reagan directed the Secretary of Defense to establish the On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA), its mission was to carry out the on-site inspection and escort responsibilities of the United States under the provisions of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (lNF) Treaty. Signed on December 8, 1987, by President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the INF Treaty enjoined the two countries to eliminate all ground launched missiles (approximately 2.700 missiles) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. National teams of inspectors would monitor and report on the elimination of these missile systems and other significant provisions of the treaty. On-site inspections were a major component of this and all subsequent phases of the treaty. They had immediate significance, both as a barometer for measuring adherence to the treaty and as a precedent for entering into future arms control treaties and agreements. Consequently, the purpose of President Reagan's January 15, 1988, directive was to define the INF Treaty mission and to fix responsibility for the U.S. government's on-site inspection and escort mission in a new Department of Defense organization: the On-Site Inspection Agency. Eleven days after the President's directive, on January 26, 1988, William H. Taft I V, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, established OSIA as a separate operating agency in the Department of Defense.

The new agency would have three deputy directors-a Principal Deputy Director, a Deputy Director for International Negotiations, and a Deputy Director for Counterintelligence. The new organization's first charter stipulated that OSIA would have two principal responsibilities:

• To manage and coordinate the U.S. INF Treaty on-site inspection activities in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, and

• To manage and coordinate all United States activities associated with the Soviet Union's on-site inspections of United States' INF facilities in the United States, Belgium, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

On February l, 1988, Brigadier General Roland Lajoie, U.S. Anny, became the first Director, On-Site Inspection Agency. The INF Treaty mission largely determined the new agency's initial organizational structure. Responsibility for planning, operational training and conducting on-site inspection and escort missions was lodged in OSIA's operations directorate. The directorate had two components: an inspection division, which prepared for and conducted U.S. on-site inspections at the 130 Soviet INF missile sites in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia: and an escort division, which was responsible for coordinating the escorting of Soviet on-site inspection teams at the 31 U.S. INF missile sites located in Western Europe and the United States. The new agency’s portal monitoring directorate had responsibility for conducting and managing the continuous on-site portal inspections.


As always, artworks featuring the insignia are available via my “Military Insignia” galleries from FineArt America and RedBubble. You can just follow the links in the article to get to the corresponding galleries.

To active duty or reserve military personnel, veterans and their family members: I grant an explicit permission to download the above images to be used for non-profit/non-commercial and charitable causes, benefiting troops and their families, as well as for non-commercial internal duty-specific purposes, such as unit website design, training materials and presentations.

The above information was exerpted from the book by Joseph P. Harahan called ON-SITE INSPECTIONS UNDER THE INF TREATY.

Marine Force Reconnaissance (FORECON)

ForceReconnaissance (FORECON) are one of the United States Marine Corps's special operations capable forces (SOC) that provide essential elements of military intelligence to the command element of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF), by supporting their task force commanders, and their subordinate operating units of the Fleet Marine Force (FMF).

Historically, the Force Recon companies, detachments and platoons performed both deep reconnaissance and direct action (DA) operations. Some missions are now shared by the Marine Special Operations Teams (MSOT), due to the establishment of the U.S. Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) in 2006. MARSOC was formed from Force Recon's direct action platoons, and now are capable of performing many of the same mission sets for USSOCOM. This dual existence now allows the FORECON companies to focus on excelling in their primary intelligence-gathering mission, as well as the Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) side of the specialized raid mission.

FORECON is responsible for operating independently behind enemy lines performing unconventional special operations, in support of conventional warfare. The unit's various methods of airborne, heliborne, submarine and waterborne insertions and extractions are similar to those of the Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, 75th Ranger Regiment, or Air Force Combat Controllers, although Force Recon's missions and tasks do differ slightly with a focus on primarily supporting Marine expeditionary and amphibious operations.

As always, the above artworks are available via my 'USMC' galleries, part of the  “Military Insignia & Heraldry” galleries from FineArt America. You can just follow the links in the article to get to the corresponding galleries.

To active duty or reserve military personnel, veterans and their family members: I grant an explicit permission to download the above images to be used for non-profit/non-commercial and charitable causes, benefiting troops and their families, as well as for non-commercial internal duty-specific purposes, such as unit website design, training materials and presentations.

The above information provided in part by Wikipedia, The Institute of Heraldry, Global Security, and the official websites of the corresponding units and formations.