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TOPOFF 4 Exercise October 15-24 Planned and Executed by Defense Contractor, AMTI-SAIC
by Open-Publishing - Saturday 1 September 20071 comment
AMTI, a Virginia Beach, Va.-based company founded by special operations veterans, was chosen for the lead role in planning and executing the exercise, under a $350-million, 5-year federal contract.
TOPOFF 4 Takes Emergency Response Exercise Global
Emergency response agencies, government agencies and other organizations have begun planning for the fourth exercise in the Department of Homeland Security’s Top Officials National Exercise Series (TOPOFF), scheduled for 2007.
By: Sandy Smith
12/06/2006
AMTI, a Virginia Beach, Va.-based company founded by special operations veterans, was chosen for the lead role in planning and executing the exercise, under a $350-million, 5-year federal contract.
TOPOFF 4 will be the nation’s largest emergency response exercise to date and will involve more than 200 domestic and international organizations, ranging from governmental agencies at all levels to private industry and non-profit organizations. The exercise will take place in three American cities as well as elsewhere in North America, in a U.S. territory, in Europe and in the Pacific region. Lessons learned from TOPOFF 4 also will have applications for response and recovery for major natural disasters.
"TOPOFF 4 will be the ultimate challenge of the ability to respond and to coordinate the response among a great number of agencies and organizations in a simulated worst-case terrorist scenario," says Jim Papineau, AMTI president and CEO. "We’re honored to have been selected to assist the nation in this vitally important endeavor."
As part of its work, AMTI will help design, cast, and run a large wargame, which will be conducted in highly sophisticated simulations. Papineau says AMTI is well-positioned to make those simulations as real-life as possible.
"With the global operational and intelligence backgrounds of our subject matter experts, we’re able to stay aware of evolving terrorist threats," he said. "This insight will be crucial in our work for TOPOFF 4."
The company also will develop and execute two cabinet-level exercises for senior officials and four seminars on national preparedness.
AMTI served in the primary support role for TOPOFF 2 and TOPOFF 3, which took place in Illinois and Washington state in 2003 and in Connecticut and New Jersey in 2005.
"The scope of TOPOFF 2 and 3 will be greatly expanded in TOPOFF 4," Papineau says. "The national and international scale, degree of planning, execution and follow-up analysis will set a new standard."
– http://www.respondersafetyonline.co...
More at links below:
– http://investors.saic.com/phoenix.z...
– http://www.special-operations-techn...
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3 September 2007, 18:34
fcw.com
As part of an exercise involving a simulated terrorism attack, the Homeland Security Department wants to gauge the extent to which the public would trust information DHS releases electronically. Like its predecessors, the fourth Top Officials (TopOff) exercise is intended to test the nation’s readiness to deal with a large-scale terrorist attacks. This time, the exercise will test the department’s public communications strategy.
BY Brian Robinson
Published on Feb. 8, 2007
The idea is to give the public information that is as complete and timely as possible about the events surrounding the attacks and what actions they should take to protect themselves. DHS will provide that information in two formats: a live video feed and a Web site. The live feed will resemble a newscast, according to DHS, featuring interviews with public officials and other experts, while the Web site will function more like a newspaper.
DHS recently released a notice requesting likely sources for a possible yearlong evaluation of the public’s understanding of the information the exercise will produce, and its trust in and compliance with the messages included.
The TopOff 4 exercise will be held in Portland, Ore., and Guam and follows a preliminary exercise held in June last year called TopOff 4 Command Post Exercise (TopOff 4 CPX), which involved more than 4,000 people from more than 85 federal, state, local and private industry organizations.
That exercise for the first time also included DHS, the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to test the coordination capabilities of the various participants. The lessons learned from that event will be carried through into this year’s exercise.
TopOff is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism program, and exercises are held every two years. TopOff 3, held in April 2005, involved the United Kingdom, Canada and U.S. participants.
The details for TopOff 5 will not be finalized until TopOff 4 lessons learned are evaluated and can be incorporated into the planning phase of TopOff 5.
http://www.fcw.com/article97613-02-08-07-Web