| Summary: | Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited === One of the greatest challenges facing the United States after a concerted terrorist attack is that of coordinating response from the myriad of resources available to the incident commander. During this crisis, the daunting task facing the Information Technology (IT) community is to bring a myriad of disparate systems and their relevant traffic together to provide the incident commander a picture of what is happening on the ground, a common operating picture, and then to push that picture up to the decision makers at the state and federal levels. This thesis will examine current organizational structures, missions and IT architectures within the United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Northern Command and the United States National Guard. In addition, this thesis will propose that one solution to bridge the divide between the disparate agencies that may respond to an emergency such as a natural disaster or a terrorist Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) may lie within the National Guard. With its unique role as a state militia and a federal warfighter, the National Guard is particularly well positioned to bridge this divide by augmenting its existing networks and incident response communications capabilities. === Major, United States Army
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