Montana National Guard to update military defense plan

FORT HARRISON, Mont. - The Montana National Guard is hosting a major Homeland Defense Conference at Fort Harrison for the next two days, where leaders and partners from across government, industry and academia strengthen the Treasure State’s security and resilience posture.

Discussions for this conference began about nine months ago where the Montana National Guard began to review its emerging requirements as a military force and homeland defense; asking themselves are they ready for Montana's “worst day?”

“We're not ready for our worst day and that’s why we’re all here today,” said Trent Gibson, director and adjutant general Montana National Guard brigadier general.

Montana National Guard brigadier general Trent Gibson said the National Guard has started the process of taking a look and updating its military defense plan.

He adds this conference will be used as a way to set the foundation of where to start plans and how to move forward with them.

“Getting all of those folks in the same room, getting comfortable with each other and understanding that we’re all in this together. This isn’t just a military situation of homeland defense, it’s not a whole government, it’s a whole society. and that intersects all aspects of society from state government down to local government,” said Gibson.

Various speakers shared information on the homeland defense foundations/authorities and state/regional operational environment brief, here are some takeaways.

The critical threats to Montana and to the United States homeland defense as a whole is China using a wide array of methods that impacts Montana like using cyber espionage and attacks to target strategic assets like Malmstrom Air Force Base and transportation hubs.

Other threats like transnational criminal organizations and violent extremism play a factor into impacting the Treasure State as well.

“The threat environment has changed, the strategic environment has changed and we need to update our plans and change with it,” said Gibson.

Some points homeland defense is campaigning for are to grow relationships to strengthen homeland defense, improve resilience to an attack, across the spectrum of conflict, focus on defending defense critical infrastructure against attacks in all domains, ensure continuity of operations and of government, and to ensure resilience in chemical, biological radiological, and nuclear response capabilities with homeland defense missions.

The Homeland Defense Conference will continue on into Wednesday and will feature topics like role of state in homeland defense/national resilience, best practices/lessons from the Colorado National Guard, workshops and more.