( CNN ) -- KYRA PHILLIPS : The president said Ebola is a national security priority . How are you responding to that ? GEN. DEMPSEY : Well , it is a national security priority . I 'd be happy to explain why . But let me speak to how we 're responding to it . We 're responding to -- I actually held a roundtable months ago because I -- a very bright staff officer on the Joints staff came to me and said this is different . This outbreak is different . It 's different because it 's urbanized , it 's different because it 's a third strain of the disease . It 's different before of the fragility of the infrastructure , of the governments in Liberia , Sierra Leone and Guinea . And so we brought in a panel of experts and we started talking about how this could evolve . And we did some parallel planning . That 's what we do , right , we plan . So AFRICOM , General Dave Rodriguez began planning for what we could do to empower and enable civil authority . You know , this is not a mil -- it 's not a military threat . But the military has some pretty unique capabilities to deal with all kinds of issues . We can provide command and control , that is to say , a central location with communications and computers and bandwidth that can help people see the situation . So command and control . Secondly is logistics . We 've got the finest logistics infrastructure in the world . So we 've got a command and control headquarters in Monrovia . We 've got an -- an intermediate logistics staging base in -- in Dakar , Senegal . We 're building a training center in Monrovia . Now , you might say , why are you building a training center ? That 's another thing we do very well , we run good boot camps . So we 're going to run a boot camp for health care workers coming from all over the world , using the Medicine Sans Frontieres program of instruction , to give those health care workers confidence that they know what they 're up against and how to follow the proper medical protocols when they 're in the hot zone . We actually are not going to play soldiers , sailors , airmen , marines , coast guardsmen in contact with patients , but we 're putting an architecture around them that will allow the health care workers to do what they 've got to do . Related : Get up to speed on the Ebola outbreak . PHILLIPS : So how are you going to protect the U.S. military troops that are there and prevent them from bringing this home ? DEMPSEY : Yes , that 's a great question . And we 're going to -- first of all , we 're not going to wait until they 're there . So we also know how to train . And so we 've got a -- we 've got a system of training events prior to deployment , during deployment and during deployment , we tier them in terms of the -- the risk that they may be in contact with somebody with Ebola . So the logistician sitting in Senegal is highly unlikely to be in contact with anyone from -- from Sierra Leone , Guinea or Liberia . So they 're in a lower risk category . And we manage them differently . Those in a high risk category , we manage them better . when they get ready to come back , there will be a period of observation before they come back . And then when they come back , there will be a 20 wait -- a 21 day period of observation when they 're back here . Now , here 's what sets us apart . Most everybody else self-monitors , right ? There 's nothing self-monitor about the way the military treats our soldiers , sailors , airmen and marines , coast guards . We 'll be -- we have a chain of command . There are some staff sergeants , some 32-year-old mean as a snake staff sergeant who every day is going to look his soldiers -- I 'll use soldiers , but it 's the other services , too -- in the eye and make sure that they 're not in any way exhibiting symptoms related to Ebola . And so we will use the chain of command to monitor , supervise monitoring from the time they leave until the time they come back and beyond when they come back to make sure we 're giving our -- our -- our young men and women the best possible chance to protect themselves and also avoid the -- to avoid but not eliminate entirely the possibility that they would bring something back . Related : U.S. troops assisting in Ebola response may be quarantined . PHILLIPS : Big picture , I 'm just going to throw it out there . DEMPSEY : Yes ? PHILLIPS : With this Ebola situation and -- and all the major gaps in the system that we 've seen , even the CDC director said that the agency should have taken control of that Dallas hospital , what does that tell you about the US ' -- the US ' capability to respond to a bioterror attack ? DEMPSEY : Well , we -- this wo n't surprise you , that we , through NORTHCOM , Northern Command , we have a command in the continental United States , it sits in Colorado Springs , Colorado . Its mission is to support the home -- well , it has a defensive mission to the homeland related to long-range aviation , to missiles and rockets and -- but it also has a very important mission to provide direct support to civil authority . And we have a contingency plan for managing pandemics , that is , things that would begin to exceed the capability of a particular community or a state even to deal with it . And we update it periodically . And this is one of those cases where we 're -- we 're dusting it off . We 're very closely in contact with all -- National Institutes of Health , the World Health Organization , the Centers for Disease Control , the U.S. Agency for International Development for the stuff going on overseas . We are in the planning business and we 're deeply into it with regard to this . But it 's very much a mission assigned to civil authority . PHILLIPS : So what do you say to all the Americans that are looking at this Ebola situation and are in absolute panic ? DEMPSEY : Well , I say a couple of things . One , the -- Ebola is a , to use a sports metaphor , this needs to be an away game . And that 's why the United States military is involved . We want to keep this -- we want to help international health organizations , service organizations and non-governmental organizations . We want to help them keep this in isolation inside of those three countries . But there is a risk that if we -- if we , collectively , the international community , failed to keep it isolated , that -- that it could become actually -- you 've heard all the experts . I do n't need to compete with them for , you know , to sound like I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night . But I have studied this thing . And there is a risk that it -- that the -- the rate of reproduction , the -- the ability of one patient to affect first two and then four and then eight and then it becomes exponential . so we 've -- we 've really got to be aggressive about the isolation and treatment matters that we 're taking up . Inside the homeland , again , we 're in support of those . But I can promise you that the United States military will do its part , with civil authorities , to keep this thing from coming to our homeland . And then inside of the United States , we 've got to count on the civil organizations that are responsible for health care . PHILLIPS : Are you , General Dempsey , worried about Ebola here in the U.S. ? DEMPSEY : I 've been worried about Ebola globally for about 90 days . And I have had some on my staff that were probably a little more worried than I was even a few weeks or months before that . PHILLIPS : Why ? DEMPSEY : I 'm worried about it because it -- because we know so little about it . You know , you 'll hear different people describe whether it could become airborne . I mean if you bring two , you know , two , uh , doctors who happen to have that specialty into a room , one will say , no , there 's no way it will ever become airborne , but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover . It actually disguises itself in the body , which is what makes it so dangerous and has that incubation period of about 21 days . Another doctor will say , well , if it continues to mutate at the rate it 's mutating and if we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000 , the population might allow it the opportunity to mutate and become airborne . And then it will be an extraordinarily serious problem . I do n't know who 's right . I do n't want to take chance , so I 'm taking it very seriously .
The Pentagon is updating it 's plan for an emergency pandemic . The Pentagon is creating a training center and `` boot camp '' for international Ebola responders . It is preferable to deal with Ebola as an `` away game , '' according to Dempsey .