This has been SOP for decades.
Done before right here in Jacksonville, Florida 15 or so years ago.
If the military will be faced with fighting in a city, they need to have the training.
Probably would have helped in Ramadi.

 

which Is the likes we may be seeing on US soil in the future, when it no longer training but the real thing…

 

I don't have a problem with military or LE units conducting training exercises in areas of civilian populations, as it provides elements that cannot be supplied in or on a dedicated training facility.

That stated, it is irresponsible for civilian government/agencies to not inform civilian populations of said exercises in a timely manner.

 

That stated, it is irresponsible for civilian government/agencies to not inform civilian populations of said exercises in a timely manner.

Likely intentional to avoid the inevitable protesters.

 

Jade Helm just for starters.

 

That was my first thought

 

last Jade Helm Delta was skid surfing little birds down the streets of Los Angeles.. It happens.....

 

Seals used to train at Washington state parks, cold water and tricky current conditions were ideal. But after recent complaints and court decision it is no longer allowed.

 

Navy now can't even fly their Growler training flights due to granolas/envirowackos/

 

To add to Rice Paddy's # 2 post;

USMC tested their "heat wave" generator - extensive heat for crowd dispursal - near here on the top portion of the Northern Neck, Virginia.. It's away from the Interstate going to D.C. Swamp but Marines wanted to test machine arriving on an amphib boat and then to be set up. It works and my recommendation is to avoid it.

I served as a "shopper" in a large mall for the Newport News PD to train for an active shooter via this exercise. Malll closed already to public. SIDEBAR: This mall is where they invented/developed the new game called "Wilding".

I was a "passenger" on a civil acft on ground for Norfolk PD and airport police (forgot name) trained for a hijacking. Public not involved though.

Rice Paddy got me in the mood for either ... can actually use both ... a saki or a couple of cans of 333 rusty top beer.

 

I'm not a big fan. First our military is poorly trained for policing actions as evidenced by both my experience deployed and our results from 20 years of patrols and key leader engagements in the middle east. Second, every base I've been to has mock up cities that are a couple blocks at least - they definitely do not need to train in an actual city. The police don't shut down your city to do exercises. They go to mock up ranges to practice breaching, cordons, crowd control.

 

Both PD and FD, and DoD don’t have training facilities like real malls, large schools, theaters etc. in DODs case it’s not necessarily policing, they have shopping malls in Kenya, the Middle East, Asia, etc. Bet the schools in a big city in the Middle East are layed out a lot like our schools.

Ive never heard of a MOUT site with more than a three story building ( and the ranger training base at Ft Bennning lacks that). But most any third world ****hole has a high rise (100’+)

It’s not like they also don’t train on oil rigs, petrochemical plants, power plants, tankers, etc.

Google the DHS/ Dallas PD run-hide-fight video. Tell me that wasn’t filmed in a real office building.

 

Training like that isn't anything unusual. There were people pitching a fit a little while back when they were doing it in Raleigh NC. And the last few years, when Robin Sage takes place here in NC, there are news stories about how the military is all of a sudden training for counterinsurgency, even though Robin Sage has been taking place for many years.

 

At Fort Bragg, NC, some of our civil affairs training happened off post. One time it caused a little trouble.

A group of Arab actors were engaged in a heated discussion with a couple uniformed Army officers. It was all part of a larger exercise but looked pretty realistic. A couple local boys driving by, didn't like what they were seeing and stopped to intervene. The observer controllers had to temporarily stop the exercise and explain to the well-meaning civilians that it was only make believe. 😊

 

Back in my Army days, we did a lot of "urban" training in preparation for various Iraq and Afghanistan deployments. We never trained in a real city. It was always some sort of mock-up constructed of shipping containers.

The coolest one was down in Southern Indiana. It was an old insane asylum all rigged up for urban warfare. It had a parking garage specifically built to be "collapsed". It had a group of houses in a depression that could be flooded. It had all sorts of sundry buildings and such.

 

Back in my Army days, we did a lot of "urban" training in preparation for various Iraq and Afghanistan deployments. We never trained in a real city. It was always some sort of mock-up constructed of shipping containers.

The coolest one was down in Southern Indiana. It was an old insane asylum all rigged up for urban warfare. It had a parking garage specifically built to be "collapsed". It had a group of houses in a depression that could be flooded. It had all sorts of sundry buildings and such.

Muscatatuck down @ Camp Atterbury, spent many a days training around those parts. MUTC is a pretty cool place. Zussman MOUT facility @ Ft. Knox is another good setup if you ever have chance to go.

 

Xic,

i'm from an earlier era. Some military were quality trained for policing. USCG is both mil and also a LE organization. After returning from RVN, I was throughly trained in assisting the civ authorities in riot control. We were well trained ... the rules of engagement with the public did not help but some ROE infractions did occur.

In Vietnam it was a blend. We would never let anyone walk near us quietly ... they were counting their steps for range so the mortars would be more accurate. These walkers encountered much interferrence from us.

In retirement, I've worked as both a volunteer "citizen" for real world approach and many time was doing this next to real, regular shoppers st a mall, an airport, etc.

That trainng city in Israel near Tel Nof is the real thing. The IDF might spend 30 hours to go 500 meters. They don't presume every window and door are mined. They would be.

Nice guys not around unless training near cemetery.

 

Re: Exercise JADE HELM...

1. JADE HELM is UW (Unconventional Warfare) training. Recurring partisan/guerilla warfare training. Usually conducted annually across several states, utilizing actual civilian localities, for several weeks or months. Because there isn't a military base anywhere in the USA remotely large enough to replicate the required training environment.

https://www.survivalistboards.com/threads/jade-helm-discussion.386350/post-7656183

2. JADE HELM is a US Army Special Forces (AKA "Green Berets") repetitive training exercise with invitational Joint participation by small elements of other SOCOM formations (USN SEALs, AFSOC, some Rangers, etc.). Top Gun training for Green Berets.

3. Delta Force doesn't do JADE HELM. Different circus, different clowns.

4. JADE HELM has very little to do with urban operations training. Not in terms of massing helicopters or assault forces to raid structural targets in big cities or towns. That kind of training is called RUT (Realistic Urban Training) and has zip to do with JADE HELM.

https://www.survivalistboards.com/threads/jade-helm-discussion.386350/post-7651457

Attack heli's conducting drills and shooting blanks...

Military Playing War in Miami again! http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/21/3193887/dont-mind-the-helicopters-its. Are they getting ready for the real thing............................

www.survivalistboards.com

The US military has conducted these kinds of special urban setting exercises for decades. Nothing new. They were old hat back in the 1990s. Occasionally the involved coordinators (either military or civilian municipal government) get their public relations & communications wires crossed. Doing an inept job of letting the local citizenry know what's going on in a timely enough manner.

Unfortunately, there's only so much transparency you can employ when having Tier One units work their classified training playbooks. It ain't a rodeo, county fair, or stadium football game where the public is invited to watch. (Although these same units do host deliberate "generic vanilla" daylight public displays a coupla times per year.)

Sometimes, the city governments or the military planners simply screw the pooch and do a poor job of keeping the public informed satisfactorily.

Then again, there's always somebody who'll get a burr under their saddle about one of these RUT exercises. No matter how hard authorities work to disseminate info to the concerned public. Or how far in advance. Often urban dwelling Karens & Kens with political/philosophical aversion to damn near anything the military does anyway. They view military training, anywhere, at any time, as a personal affront to their insular urban existence. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).

 

Many who served in the military have trained at on-base MOUT training sites or other small scale urban warfare centers. Few of them are very large. Just a few streets & city blocks spread across a few acres. Maybe village sized. I've trained in an actual small city sized facility located in Israel. Still only a few square miles. All of them great for training up individual teams, squads, platoons, companies, or battalions in the art of street and building fighting. But...

Those facilities (even the biggest ones... like NTC's armored maneuver area) are simply too tiny for some types of training. Lacking frontage, square mileage, or lane throughput for maneuvering really large ground units.

Showing my age, but there was a time when NATO units used huuuge tracts of the heavily populated civilian German landscape for major maneuvers. Corps & Divisional sized formations rolling over highways, towns, cities, rivers, farms, villages, bridges, and fields. Hundreds of thousands of exercising troops scattered over the entire country simultaneously. Fighter jets and attack helicopters flying over every conceivable populated area. Battalions of paratroops dropping from night time skies onto village farm fields. Autobahns clogged with hundreds of tanks and thousands of vehicles. All of those units pretty much driving or flying wherever needed/ordered.

REFORGER was one of the bigger recurrent exercises, but far from the only one. Multiple giant exercises happened every year. All across Western Europe. Very little of it simulated (no virtual computer network yet existed to do that). Actual Corps, Brigades & Divisions out physically maneuvering on the civilian landscape. Rehearsing their actual wartime defenses & counterattacks in free play against equivalent sized "enemy" forces. The gun fire was simulated, but the troops and war machinery were not.

Meaning tanks & APCs rolling through peoples yards, fences, and town streets. Accidentally crushing parked cars or clipping the walls of houses. Miles long traffic jams of military convoys. Forests filled with hidden artillery emplacements and camouflaged troops & armor. Fleets of ships, airplanes, and trains moving the actual sinews of war from the USA to European ports/airheads... and then into the exercise landscape. From Norway, UK, & the North Sea to the Warsaw Pact Frontier to the Bavarian Alps. Gargantuan.

None of it conducted inside of actual military training grounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger

I participated in those European exercises for years.

A coupla dozen high speed guys and a few helicopters firing blanks over a coupla buildings/streets for a half hour or so? Meh.

 

Well....the "just one night" training has morphed into "just a week" of training in downtown / east side. City got told around NOON today that it'd be continuing all week - 7pm to 1-3am every night.

I'm all for having a well trained military & I recognize city training is necessary, but to me this falls under a violation of the 3rd Amendment. Folks running businesses in the area are losing income due to blocking traffic, traffic & transit is rerouted, and folks living in the areas are forced to put up with mock battles in their neighborhoods half the night. As a child of a Veteran with severe PTSD, this would have been a NIGHTMARE scenario that could have led to horrible outcomes for him and possibly others. I shudder to think what other veterans in the area are dealing with, especially given several of these areas are high homeless populations with a lot of severe ptsd vets.

 

Well....the "just one night" training has morphed into "just a week" of training in downtown / east side. City got told around NOON today that it'd be continuing all week - 7pm to 1-3am every night.

I'm all for having a well trained military & I recognize city training is necessary, but to me this falls under a violation of the 3rd Amendment. Folks running businesses in the area are losing income due to blocking traffic, traffic & transit is rerouted, and folks living in the areas are forced to put up with mock battles in their neighborhoods half the night. As a child of a Veteran with severe PTSD, this would have been a NIGHTMARE scenario that could have led to horrible outcomes for him and possibly others. I shudder to think what other veterans in the area are dealing with, especially given several of these areas are high homeless populations with a lot of severe ptsd vets.

Implying this violates the 3rd is about as big of a stretch as I have seen in a while. There is absolutely no expectation for civilians to house or care for the troops in any fashion.

Every single veteran can be seen by the VA for behavioral health regardless of living status.
The VA has more behavioral health specialists than any other single type of doctor now and they dont turn any veteran away.
Now, if they are not really a veteran and just flying that sign to make people feel sorry for them and give them cash... those people are out of luck.
But if an exercise like this helps identify those that actually need it then we should be doing it every week.

PTSD is a term that gets tossed around pretty frequently by those that want some extra attention.
It is absolutely real but many times, the ones talking about it the loudest are simply seeking attention and they cast a shadow on those that truly need assistance.

Ironically, the average person on the street absolutely loves to see the military roll through or playing wargames, especially the kids.
Generally speaking the only ones that really complain are the karens that have a) never served and b) are leeches on society anyway.

 

What's everyone's take on this: U.S. Army to conduct military training in Downtown, East Side San Antonio on Monday

City wasn't told until Friday. Police apparently knew, but not the City. No one public was told until Friday night. City's a dead zone right now for flights / radar in a large area. Folks a ways out from downtown have reported hearing "booms".

I find it really odd, honestly. I don't understand why they couldn't use one of the FIVE bases instead & why they needed to use downtown? And the lack of warning is suspect, especially with the amount of veterans here who suffer from PTSD.

From the civvie POV, my only question/concern on this type of exercise is; "Foreign or domestic?"

Otherwise, im like "Hey man, can i get some trigger time?!" LOL!

 

Again...

Exercise JADE HELM has nothing to do with the training described in San Antonio.

JADE HELM does not focus on urban CQB warfare conducted by high-speed Direct Action raiding forces (like Delta Force, 160th SOAR, SEAL Team 6, or FBI HRT).

JADE HELM is a UW (Unconventional Warfare) exercise. One that involves practicing partisan/guerilla warfare. Think WWII French Underground / 1940s Viet Minh - 1970s Viet Cong / 1775 Revolutionary War Militia & Washington's Spies type stuff.

This exercise in San Antonio is something else entirely. 100 people (including aircrews, admin/logistical support, role players, & exercise command & control on the ground), ~8 helicopters, conducting night time Direct Action Raid training in urban terrain. Hostage rescue, kill/capture of terrorists or other HVTs (High Value Targets), etc. Pretty standard fare for the type of units that routinely train to this mission set. They've been doing exactly this kind of training all over the country... several times per year. For decades.

Apparently the city PD has known about it for months. The elected representatives for the urban districts affected knew about it and posted it (in advance) on their public websites. I guarandamntee that the mayor's office knew about it. The FAA knew about it. Local hospitals knew about it (standard pre-training safety coordination in the event of need). Flyers were posted in the city. Several news stations reported on it before it occurred.

San Antonio being home to five largish Army/Air Force bases, it's not like the residents are unfamiliar with local military training or the sound of military aircraft overhead. By every definition of the phrase, it's a military town with a large population of active duty troops, retired/former military members/families, and DoD civilian employees.

But the usual fringe cast of vocal complainers are out in force because they didn't personally know in advance (because they didn't bother to read/watch the news). Same kind of people that get caught unawares by definitively forecasted stormy weather or announced highway construction delays.

PTSD ain't the problem here. Willfully uninformed people are.






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