US CBRN response force conducts mass casualty decontamination exercise
US soldiers assigned to a Defense CBRN Response Force made up of the 89th Military Police Brigade, the 48th Chemical Brigade and the 44th Medical Brigade, conducted a mass casualty decontamination training exercise in Fayetteville, North Carolina, 10 February 2026.
The response force is a specialised 5,200-person US Northern Command joint task force, primarily composed of army personnel, designed to rapidly respond to domestic CBRN incidents and support civil authorities by providing medical care, decontamination, and search and rescue within 24 hours of alert.
Civilian volunteers acted as casualties during the exercise, wearing disposable clothing and being given mock wounds, allowing the soldiers to train more realistically. Soldiers actively engaged in decontamination wore "level C" respiratory protection to filter known, identified airborne contaminants using a powered air-purifying respirator. They also changed shifts approximately every hour to prevent heat exhaustion from working inside the protective equipment.
A video from the exercise can be watched here, and a gallery can be viewed here.
