Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class William Phillips | Sailors stop a gate runner as part of Citadel Shield 2018 at Naval Support Activity...... read more read more
A late model white pickup truck pulls up to Gate 2 at Naval Support Activity Bethesda (NSAB) on a blustery winter day. The entry control point sentry asks to see both passengers IDs.
The driver and passenger begin to argue and become disgruntled with the gate sentries while they run through their procedures to take control of a threat. Onlookers quickly realize this is not going to be a usual stop.
Suddenly the truck accelerates.
As it speeds onto base, protective barriers deploy to stop the truck’s progress.
And with that, what seemed to be a dangerous threat actually signified the start of the live exercise training day for Citadel Shield – Solid Curtain 2018.
“It’s the annual capstone event for the Navy to evaluate all the anti-terrorism plans they have in place for all the installations,” said Kirk Morford, NSAB installation training officer. “It’s the same thing for us once a year; we run a major exercise to test our security for the base.”
As the driver surrendered, the passenger ran and dropped a black backpack with wires hanging out on the ground. He got away, and the base police gave the driver instructions to exit the vehicle. The driver dropped the improvised explosive device (IED) that he had on the ground and was detained by the security force. The police cleared the truck of any other threats.
“The police officers responded; they did what they were supposed to do,” said Barry Bradwell, NSAB security director. “They did all their procedures to detain and apprehend the suspect. They also set up an incident command post and managed the crisis that was at hand.”
The Feb. 1 exercise was conducted to evaluate how security personnel handle threatening situations and give them guidance on what can be improved.
Security personnel are able to take the training outcomes as lessons on what they need to do to prepare for real life events.
“At first I felt nervous for the exercise, but then when things proceeded I knew what I was doing because I trained and put what I knew to good use,” said Master-at-Arms Seaman Shemila Boatswain, ECP sentry.
According to Morford there were a lot of lessons learned about ways NSAB can improve the process.
“Every time you do an exercise you realize that ‘we could do that better, we could do this better,’” said Morford. “Going forward I think my plan is to do a lot more pre-training events.”
Due to a real-world situation, emergency resources had to be reassigned mid-exercise. As a result the active shooter part of the drill was not able to be completed. Morford said that wasn’t a problem.
“I still think it went really well. There was a lot of effort put into it; it’s a shame we didn’t get to actually finish the exercise, the active shooter piece, but even real world events have training value and I couldn’t have scripted it better,” said Morford. “When we had finished the first exercise and we had that real world event — which as far as I’m concerned was just like the exercise — we rolled right into it. We already had everything stood up and the commanding officer made the most out of it, and I think we got a lot of training out of that.”
The training was the last piece of NSAB’s Citadel Shield training for 2018. Solid Curtain, the next exercise, runs from Feb. 5 to Feb. 9.
“Solid Curtain will mainly be driven by [United States Fleet Forces Command]. Fleet Forces will decide whether we go to higher force protection conditions (FPCON) that will be passed down to the installations,” said Bradwell. “We will possibly do a barrier plan on our mission essential vulnerabilities. We do this every time we go to higher FPCONs to make sure we protect our assets that are vital to the installation.”
| Date Taken: | 02.08.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 02.08.2018 09:14 |
| Story ID: | 265191 |
| Location: | BETHESDA, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 40 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, “We Train Like We Fight”: NSAB Conducts Citadel Shield Exercise, by PO1 Julio Martinez, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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