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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

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.

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