Defensive Planning for Fixed Facilities

The Department of Energy (DOE) has recently published a technical standard (DOE STD-1207- 2012, Protection Program Defensive Planning For Fixed Facilities) intended to assist sites in designing, assessing, and implementing an efficient and effective defensive plan for their fixed sites. This technical standard provides basic principles in the areas of terrain analysis, barrier planning and defensive fire planning. It illustrates the integration of these factors into a comprehensive site defensive plan that effectively and efficiently optimizes site assets and provides maximum survivability for site protective forces. While the focus of the standard is on defense of a site by an armed protective force, many of the principles are appropriate when planning for an unarmed defense augmented by external armed responders. This paper will describe and summarize the standard, discuss the advantages of applying the principles presented in the standard, and offer some suggestions for how these principles might be extended to a site depending on external armed response.