When I drove on to Ft Knox Tuesday morning there were several HUMMWVs at the Bullion Depository. Guess I am too pre-occupied to worry about too much as I just glanced at them, thought to myself that it was an exercise and drove to work.
When I was there as a kid, there was a thing called “Operation Eldorado” which was a standing “protect the Gold Vault” operation, and it got tested periodically. At that time, phase 1 was all MPs converged to assist the Treasury people at the Depository. Phase two was a combined arms platoon with few tanks and APCs that were always on-call. Not in vehicles on call, but on call via phone from units / home. I don’t think there were pagers then, but I expect they got them early on.
Knowing what I know about moving gold, you weren’t going to move enough to be worthwhile before armor came down on you like a ton of bricks.
Having a standing operations plan like that is one thing. If orders were really cut with the language presented here, that is a whole ‘nother can of worms.