WASHINGTON, Aug 8: The US military has devised its first-ever war plans for responding to terrorist attacks that envision 15 potential crisis scenarios, including simultaneous strikes around the country, The Washington Post reported on Monday. The classified plans, developed at Northern Command headquarters in Colorado, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.

Northern Command leader Adm. Timothy Keating told the Post , “In my estimation (in the event of) a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned — of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved — to take the lead.”

Mr Keating expressed confidence that existing military assets were sufficient to meet homeland security needs. Officials, however, told the newspaper that military forces would play a supporting role to help local first responders in any emergency, only taking a lead position if the attack was so serious as to overwhelm local efforts.

The report said that possible scenarios ranged from relatively modest crowd-control missions to full-scale disaster management after catastrophic attacks such as the release of a deadly biological agent or the explosion of a radiological device.

Some of the worst-case scenarios involved three simultaneous attacks on the US soil.

The paper said the war plans represented a historic shift for the Pentagon, which had been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and was legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement.

The report said some senior officials acknowledged that the military would have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.

The post said the plans came at a time when senior Pentagon officials were engaged in a year-long review of force levels and weapons systems, attempting to balance the requirements of homeland defence against the demands of overseas deployments.

Maj-Gen. Richard J. Rowe, chief operations officer at Northern Command, warned that the military could reach ‘stress points’ if troops were called on to deal with multiple homeland attacks.