Exchange without additional support. However, many rear area units will not
have regularly assigned PDDE.
This shortage of equipment demands
centralized management. Any unit that needs more support must get it from
the corps chemical companies.
Some small units may depend entirely on
support from Corps.
The chemical staff for a corps, support command, or TACCOM must assess the
available decontamination assets and develop a management plan.
Assets
probably will be concentrated in two forms, mobile teams and permanent or
semipermanent decontamination sites. FM 3-101 provides further guidance for
managing the decontamination assets on the battlefield.
3.
Mobile Teams.
The corps chemical staff may designate
mobile teams that can support
Operational and Thorough Decontamination.
These will usually be platoon-
size elements.
Larger teams will be
needed to decontaminate large
facilities and terrain.
Mobile teams will find it difficult to decontaminate everything at some
facilities. For example, at an airfield a Decontamination Team first would
have to decontaminate a hangar to provide a site to decontaminate airfield
personnel and some of their equipment.
The personnel could easily become
recontaminated by moving or working in contaminated areas.
This transfer
hazard will remain a problem until all parts of the airfield have weathered.
If a Decontamination Team tries to decontaminate all the operational areas
before the people or equipment, the people and equipment may recontaminate
clean areas as they continue to operate the airfield. It might be better
for small groups of airfield personnel and equipment to be rotated away for
decontamination while the mobile team decontaminates their work area.
Although a vapor hazard would still be present when the airfield personnel
returned, their area would be free of the transfer hazard.
4.
Permanent Decontamination Site.
The chemical staff might consider setting up Regional Decontamination sites
as service stations. These sites must be evenly spaced across the support
area so contaminated units do not have far to travel. This saves time for
the units and avoids spreading contamination. Soldiers and mobile equipment
at a contaminated fixed facility can be moved to one of these service
stations
for
decontamination.
Some
advantages of
using
regional
decontamination sites for corps and higher support areas are:
Less risk to troops and civilians. Runoff and vapor hazards at the
decontamination site can be easily controlled. The sites can be put
in areas away from troops and civilian populations.
CM2300
2-16
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