Once again, government officials are testing out their terrorism response capabilities and readiness through a large-scale exercise. TOPOFF 3, which takes place April 4-8, tests a chemical weapons scenario in New London, Connecticut, and a biological weapons scenario in two New Jersey counties outside New York City. Although there have been two previous TOPOFF exercises since 2000, TOPOFF 3 is the largest and most elaborate to date. It costs US$16 million and involves 10,000 participants from 200 international, federal, state, local, tribal, and private agencies. The exercise also involves officials from the United Kingdom and Canada . In New Jersey alone, 21 counties and 82 hospitals are expected to participate. The first part of the exercise in New Jersey focuses on a fake car registration and an accident at a university. Response efforts to these seemingly unlinked incidents tie them to the outbreak of the biological agent. The exercise then shifts gears and examines hospitals and patient care responses.

This is a very large and complex exercise by anyone?s standards. Previous TOPOFF exercises have exposed problems with the response system, the point being to uncover flaws so that they can be mitigated or fixed. Some of the weaknesses from previous exercises have yet to be addressed, so there is some question as to why officials are conducting an even larger scenario and one so soon on the heals of the other TOPOFFs. Officials do not see a problem with this. Even if this exercise stresses the response system to its breaking point, they believe there is value in revealing where those breaking points are.