Mock war protesters gather as military police stand guard Tuesday during the Orbit Comet exercise at Fort Bragg.
Posted on 04/06/2005 6:51:07 AM PDT by clyde asbury
Published on: Wednesday, April 6, 2005
About 25 protestors chanted and waved antiwar signs at an entrance to Fort Bragg. Suddenly, there was an explosion, and people began falling.
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Mock war protesters gather as military police stand guard Tuesday during the Orbit Comet exercise at Fort Bragg.
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People in civilian clothes sprinted onto the Army post. Someone yelled, ''Go get 'em,'' and military police officers with dogs ran in pursuit.
That was the scene Tuesday afternoon during the spring Orbit Comet antiterrorism exercise on Fort Bragg. The action took place on Watson Street in the 1st Corps Support Command area as traffic whizzed past on Bragg Boulevard.
The script called for a peaceful protest - conducted by short-haired role players from the 82nd Airborne Division - to turn hostile. Hostages were to be taken - some were to be killed - and a lethal biological substance was to be released.
The exercise continues today with scenarios simulating a terrorist attack on Fort Bragg's computer network.
Orbit Comet exercises usually simulate attacks on Army information systems and attacks with weapons of mass destruction. Scenarios include large numbers of medical casualties.
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The exercise involved firefighters, emergency medical technicians, security guards and military police, said Brian Smith. He is a program manager for antiterrorism operations at Fort Bragg. He works for the the Security and Intelligence Division of Fort Bragg's Directorate of Emergency Services.
The Criminal Investigation Command became involved in hostage negotiations, he said.
''We are really just trying to test how the first responders, the law enforcement, interact with each other,'' said Tony Martin, chief of Fort Bragg's Antiterrorism and Security Branch.
Spc. Mark Simms of the 118th Military Police Company, searches mock protester Pvt. John Adkerson, of Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion, during the Orbit Comet exercise Tuesday on Fort Bragg.
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Fort Bragg will hold another, larger Orbit Comet exercise in August that will include federal, state and local agencies.
''It just keeps us sharp as we go into the larger events,'' Martin said.
The exercise planners take known threats and apply them to a scenario involving Fort Bragg, Martin said.
Participants look at strengths and weaknesses of their performance in during reviews of the exercises.
Each exercise involves areas identified during previous exercises as needing improvement, he said.
Military editor Henry Cuningham can be reached at cuninghamh@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3585.
One fatal flaw in the exercise: Real antiwar activists would be wetting themselves and babbling if they were to encounter a genuine crisis situation.
Thanks for the ping and the post, respectively.
If the leftists get wind of this, they will be screaming that it's preparation for the coming mass suppression of protest. Of course, those leftists are the same ones that are saying that we are already in a facist state, which leads one to wonder how they explain why they haven't been shipped to GITMO quite a few protests back.
Last June, we FReeped leftists protesting outside Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld's personal residence. Near the end of their protest, about 6 to 10 of them sang "We all live in a military state" as they danced in a circle. If they had done that outside Saddam's defense minister's house a few years back, they would have learned what it was really like to "live in a military state."
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