Longtime YPG employee is new mission antiterrorism officer

When the Pentagon confirmed in early July that the U.S. Government had destroyed the last of its declared chemical weapons, Robert Barocio, who was recently promoted to be the mission Antiterrorism Officer (ATO) at Yuma Proving Ground (YPG), knew he had once played a small role in eliminating stockpiles of them from around the world.

As a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) Specialist while serving in the U.S. Army with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, one of Barocio’s tasks included conducting inspections in countries run by governments that were either known to have made or stored chemical weapons.

“I have been to 48 countries: It was a lot of traveling,” Barocio said. “I would go there and make sure they weren’t producing chemical weapons anymore.”

Many countries stockpiled chemical weapons until the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was signed by 193 countries, took effect in 1997.

Eliminating stockpiles of them, however, has been a decades-long effort.

After retiring from the Army, Barocio was hired at YPG in October 2008 as a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and High Yield Explosive (CBRNE) officer.

“I was told that there was a need for somebody out here with my type of experience,” Barocio said. “I came here so I could be closer to my children, who live in El Paso, Texas. I really missed them and was looking for someplace that was more permanent.”

When an Emergency Management Officer position was created several years later Barocio wasted no time applying for the opening.

“It just fell into my lap,” Barocio said of the job he had held the past nine years. “I was told that since I had dealt with catastrophic events and explosives I could slide right in and that is what I did.”

As the new mission ATO, Barocio is responsible for developing force protection measures that ensures the YPG test mission is postured to defend against an array of threats against its personnel while working alongside the garrison’s ATO.

To do so, he continually tracks and identifies trends while working with state and federal law enforcement agencies to identify threats, develops threat identification strategies for the test mission, and recommends any course of action changes to reduce vulnerability.

“In emergency management you deal with responding to an event and the recovery afterwards,” Barocio said. “The object of antiterrorism is to stop a threat from ever happening or discourage those who pose a threat to our testing mission. It’s going from taking a respond and recover approach to a prevention and protection approach.”

One of his main goals in addition to increasing antiterrorism awareness is helping civilian employees become more conscious about protecting vital information.

“I want to take steps to put it in the forefront of people’s minds,” Barocio said. “It is about constant vigilance. The constant theme of, 'if you see something, say something,' no matter how trivial it may seem.”