In 1999 funding was provided by Congress and the Department of Defense to train, organize, and equip a series of Civil Support Teams (CSTs). The CST mission is to support civilian emergency response authorities in crisis and consequence management for domestic incidents involving Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE) Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Each CST employs 22 Army and Air National Guardsmen trained in 6 functional areas: command, operations, communications, administration and logistics, medical, and survey.

CSTs and civilian emergency response organizations share a common mission - to effectively mitigate the effects of WMD incidents. To achieve this mission CSTs and civilians must be able to train together. Coordinating efforts between military and civilian teams in high stress situations will always be challenging but a joint training and exercise program will begin to solve this problem.

This paper will discuss the issues and solutions involved with modifying a training and exercise program designed specifically for civilians to create a tool that is able to train, exercise, and assess CSTs and civilians together. The Automated Exercise and Assessment System (AEAS) is a simulation system designed to train, exercise, and assess command-level civilian emergency responders in incidents involving WMD. Incorporating CSTs into AEAS required knowledge engineering the responsibilities of the six functional areas of a CST and how the CST is expected to complement the civilian emergency response team. While tasks, conditions, and standards are consistent for all CSTs, their standard operating procedures, capabilities, response times, and equipment vary substantially from team to team.