One of the Joint Task Force-National Capital Region's most essential tasks is to plan, coordinate and execute Department of Defense-approved support, as well as conduct liaison and coordination with the Presidential Inaugural Committee and the
United States Congress Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Immediately following the general election, the President-elect appoints the inaugural committee to plan, coordinate and host numerous celebrations and special events associated with the Presidential Inauguration. The joint committee, appointed by the House and the Senate, is responsible for conducting the swearing-in ceremony for the President-elect and Vice President–elect at the Capitol. Both of these committees historically request various forms of ceremonial support from Department of Defense. When called upon to assist in a regional crisis or an NSSE (national events requiring security measures outlined and directed by the U.S. Secret Service), the JTF mobilizes to respond as quickly as possible and with as many component and interagency partners as applicable to address the issue at hand. Although the JTF is the single point of contact for military entities within the NCR, the JTF is ultimately guided by a lead agency (the agency that asked the JTF for assistance to begin with) and the directives of USNORTHCOM. The Joint Task Force participates in all inter-agency planning and conducts planning with joint partners in the
National Capital Region. The joint force is expected to provide world-class ceremonial support for the Presidential Inauguration and the related official ceremonies and events throughout the inaugural period, continuing the tradition of military participation in the inauguration of the commander-in-chief, tracing back to the inauguration of George Washington in 1789. The JTF-NCR has had several claims of success in the few years it has been operating. The first crisis that required what was then the JFHQ-NCR to activate its JTF occurred on February 2, 2004, when
ricin was discovered in the
Capitol Hill office mail room of
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF) assisted in the situation and helped officials safely decontaminate the area. Other times the JTF was activated in the NCR included the dedication of the
World War II Memorial on the
National Mall and its accompanying
World War II reunion,
former president Ronald Reagan's state funeral, President
George W. Bush's 2005
Presidential Inauguration, President Bush's
State of the Union Addresses, and the
state funeral of former president Gerald Ford.
Joint Operations Center The Joint Operations Center (JOC), dedicated a month and a half prior to the official activation of JFHQ-NCR, is the command and control center at the heart of the command. The JOC is housed in a building at Ft. McNair, designed with the latest in communication capabilities. The JOC boasts dozens of workstations, complete with secure and non-secure capability by way of phones, computer network access, and video teleconferencing for the entire center. The JOC is also "
red phone" capable,
Geospatial Information System ready, and fully integrated into the secure NORTHCOM communications system. In addition to the ability to communicate with various civilian and military units within the NCR, satellites provide the JOC with secure communication links to the Mobile Command Center and its smaller mobile cousin, "Dagger."
Mobile Command Post The Mobile Command Post (MCP), like the JOC, was instituted as a direct result of failures in communication capabilities at the time of the September 11th attacks. MG James Jackson needed to be in two places at once much of the time to coordinate recovery efforts at the Pentagon; however, "We had no vehicle then that was capable of anything more than a non-secure telephone connection. The EOC was basically an unclassified environment. (Jackson) made the commitment to secure a modern mobile command center and to fund it from the MDW budget," said Col. Egon Hawrylak (USA-Ret.), a civilian deputy operations officer who previously worked in the MDW operations center. The MCP, a mobile, smaller version of the JOC, is situated on a 41-foot, 10-wheeled, truck chassis. The MCP was custom built for its mission of providing mobile support to the JFHQ commander and the JOC and, like the JOC, is complete with the latest in computer, technological, and communication advances. ==Organization==