Task Force Sentinel is a small detachment fighting the war against terrorism--41 soldiers of the Vermont Army National Guard who are on active duty in the northwest corner of the state to protect their backyard and your front door. They are among approximately 1,100 Guard soldiers currently activated to help protect U.S. borders under Operation Noble Eagle, the domestic security operation launched in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Supporting the U.S. Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service, they help stop terrorists and weapons of mass destruction from entering the United States.
Vermont's Task Force Sentinel serves along a 40-mile or so stretch of the Canadian border. Its soldiers are stationed at eight land entry ports, only one of which can be considered major.
Highgate Springs border crossing on Interstate 89 services the main road connecting Montreal and the rest of Quebec to Boston. Up to 12,000 cargo trucks pass through there each month along with tens of thousands of automobiles.
The other entry ports are quaint outposts guarding back roads that cut across lush pasturelands and dairy farms from Canada. The busiest of them might see 40 or 50 cars roll up during a weekend eight-hour shift, and not long ago stations that were not open 24 hours a day posted a sign at closing time that politely asked crossers to turn around and go to another port that was open.
The honor system does not cut it now, however. The tranquil farmland is a dangerous frontier. Several cells with probable al Qaeda links are thought to be operating in or around Montreal, and for many years the area has been a major marijuana smuggling route from hydroponic farming operations in Canada.
From Morses Line station, one of the small entry ports where Task Force Sentinel soldiers work, you can see the tops of the silos on Sgt. Chad Bouchard's family farm. Sgt. Bouchard volunteered to be a part of the task force. You can see SFC Stephen Patterson's house from the small entry port in Richford, Vt. He is on the task force, too.
"If you live locally, you know the agents and you know the people," SFC Patterson explained. "That helps you see whether something is out of the ordinary."
Most of the Task Force Sentinel soldiers live within 20 miles of the stations they help guard, "Our first choices were local soldiers," said lst Sgt. Dennis Sheridan, the noncommissioned officer in charge of Task Force Sentinel. "Not only do they know the area and the people, but the people know them, and that makes them more comfortable with seeing a soldier at the port."
Inspectors have databases to help with the screening, but most of the time human instincts and experience are the tools. "It's a difficult task to know whom or what to search sometimes," said Inspector Scott Alderman of the Customs Service. "You must be able to pick up on body language and listen carefully to their story. You have to take in the totality of the situation, and you have about 15 seconds to make a decision."
"We're another set of eyes," SFC Patterson explained. Most Task Force Sentinel members are from the Vermont Army Guard's 1st Battalion, 172nd Armor, headquartered in Saint Albans, and they help secure entry ports along approximately half of the state's border with Canada. Another unit has responsibility for the other half.
Before Guard soldiers came on active duty to support the border services, inspectors had been working up to 16 hours a day for 30 or 40 days without a day off, causing fatigue that not only affected the officers personally but which could have led to decreased job performance. The military support also has allowed port directors to expand searches. For example, the Guard soldiers working cargo inspections at the Highgate Springs entry port allowed checks to increase to 7 percent of the truck traffic coming through that port, compared to 1 percent checked before the soldiers arrived. So far, soldiers at Highgate Springs have been responsible for several major drug finds, which they consider a bonus contribution while focusing on national security. As Craig Jehle, the U.S. Custom Service area port director, put it, "If we knew whether terrorists or drugs were inside, we wouldn't actually need to open up the truck."
The 179-day orders that put soldiers performing the border mission on Title 10 (federal) service began in March and will expire this month. (It is not known at this writing if the border mission will be authorized and funded for an additional 179-day period, the maximum period under the requisite authority.)
While Task Force Sentinel assists Customs inspectors and INS agents on the ground, another arm of Vermont's border support operation helps from the air.
The mission of the Vermont Reconnaissance and Aerial Interdiction Detachment (RAID) shifted from counterdrug operations (a state mission) on the border to a federal counter-terrorism mission in March under Department of Justice funding through the Department of Defense.
Vermont RAID has two OH-58D helicopters equipped with Wulfsberg radios, which not only allow the crew to communicate with civilian law enforcement agencies on the border but often act as relays and become the only means that allow different law enforcement agencies on the ground to talk to each other. The helicopters also have forward looking infrared systems and 30-million-candlepower Nightsun spotlights.
Based in Burlington, the Vermont detachment has five pilots, two technical inspectors, one mechanic and two operations/refueling NCOs currently on active duty. (Two pilots and one mechanic working in Vermont were attached from the Tennessee Army National Guard for the mission.)
The detachment will log about 800 hours flying time for the six months of its activation for the counter-terrorism mission, and that is about 200 more hours than a typical flying year on the counter-drug mission. Its area of responsibility extends from western Maine to eastern New York, which is more than 220 nautical miles of U.S. border.
"Our mission is to support the U.S. Border Patrol in all aspects of border operations, providing patrols and aircraft on an on-call status," said Capt. Roger W. Drury, the detachment commander. "We always took our business seriously," he said, "but the tone changed on September 11."
Vermont soldiers' reasons for volunteering for the border protection mission follow one central theme: patriotism. "I really felt obliged to do something after September 11," said Sgt. Michael Byers, a member of Task Force Sentinel. "After the September 11 bombings, I figured that I just had to do something to help my country," echoed Spc. Daniel Langlois.
"For a lot of soldiers, this is their first real-world mission, so they take it very seriously," 1st Sgt. Sheridan said. "It may not be a very glamorous job-climbing into trucks, checking car trunks and the like-but for the country right now it's a very necessary job."
[Sidebar]
A Legacy of Being on the Leading Edge
[Sidebar]
Another element of the Vermont National Guard is helping to protect another U.S. border-one you cannot see. It's the line of defense at the front end of military computer systems.
The Vermont National Guard is a leader in many aspects of information operations (10) training, including training to protect computer networks. Military personnel in the active and reserve components come to the Vermont Regional Training Center from around the country to be trained by the 3rd Battalion, 124th Training Regiment (Information Operations). The unit teaches several advanced general IO and computer system management courses that are available nowhere else in the military training system.
Among its courses is the incident response handling course for National Guard computer emergency response teams (CERTs). The National Guard has the lead for military computer defense, and each state is standing up a seven-soldier CERT to respond to both state and federal computer incidents that include hacking and other computer intrusions.
The Vermont National Guard in many ways created its own 10 niche by employing an "entrepreneurial spirit," according to the Vermont Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Martha T. Rainville.
Putting it simply, she said, "We took a risk." There was no funding or slots for 10 when the state's leadership evaluated the situation about four years ago. On the plus side, however, were "the people and skills in Vermont," according to Gen. Rainville. "We have Norwich University here, which is very interested in this developing mission area, and we have a technology base with our tech industry." (IBM has a major facility in Burlington, Vt.)
[Sidebar]
The 10 training mission was one that Vermont Guard leaders believed was suited to their assets and was geared toward its state culture, so the Vermont National Guard went after the IO mission with New England tenacity and vigor.
"We carved out this training mission as sort of a niche for Vermont because we thought we would be good at it," Gen. Rainville said, and it represents the kind of creative momentum she wants to build so the Vermont National Guard can reshape itself for the future in all areas.
"I see the Vermont National Guard continuing to evolve over the next 10 years, really looking hard at legacy missions and shifting slowly from legacy missions to new mission areas. 10 is one of them, but it is only one of them," she explained. "We must be willing to make some tough decisions and position ourselves for future missions, not just for our own benefit, but so we can continue to be relevant and be what the country needs."
"You hear stories about some cavalry units still having horses when World War II started," she said. "We don't want that to happen to us. We want to be relevant. We want the multiple-launch rocket system as opposed to the artillery system we have now; we want the nextgeneration tank.
"Then we must position ourselves for what we want beyond that. What kind of division do we want the Vermont Army Guard to be a part of ... one of the homeland security divisions that is being talked about, or something else ... perhaps a future type of division that would be smaller and more agile. It's exciting because we know that change is the only thing we can count on, and Vermont has always been on the forefront throughout its history."
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