Exercise Atlantic Blue
Details of the Exercise
April 2005
Exercise Atlantic Blue (known as TopOff 3 in the US and Triple Play in
Canada) was a major international counter-terrorism exercise involving the
UK, US and Canada. It tested our response to internationally linked
terrorist incidents.
Objectives of the exercise:
-
Incident management - To test the existing procedures for domestic
incident management of a terrorist event and to improve, through
practice, top officials' ability to work together across the affected
countries.
-
Public information - To practice the joint response of the UK, US and
Canadian governments to media handling and public information.
-
Intelligence and investigation - To test the flow of operational
time-critical intelligence among US, UK and Canadian agencies.
The exercise is currently being evaluated.
This exercise was part of the Home Office counter-terrorism exercise
programme. The programme is centred on three annual large-scale live
exercises with police forces, other government departments and agencies
testing counter-terrorist contingency plans.
Between the beginning of 2003 and the end of 2004 there were six
large-scale live exercises and 32 tabletop exercises within the Home Office
national counter-terrorism exercise programme.
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