Vigilance key as Airmen train as they fight

Published May 9, 2013
By Airman 1st Class Kelsey Waters
100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs

RAF MILDENHALL, England -- Exercises allow military bases to test their ability to respond to the worst possible scenarios - plane crashes, active shooters and natural disasters, just to name a few that can be rehearsed.

But what happens when an unanticipated event occurs while the base in the middle of an exercise?

This question was posed April 30, 2013, and RAF Mildenhall's response was textbook as Tech. Sgt. Michael Christiansen, 100th Security Forces Squadron assistant flight chief alpha flight from Layton, Utah, directly responded to an "exercise" active-shooter situation here.

While the exercise call went across the radios about an armed assailant on base, Tech. Sgt. Suzy Madrigal-Ames took immediate cover under a desk during lockdown in building 809.

"I heard someone say 'active shooter' and half of our building was locked down, so I ran in to my office and called 911," Madrigal-Ames said. "I called it in as an exercise because that's what I thought it was."

Christiansen, while on patrol, received a call about a possible exercise active-shooter situation. The description called in was so detailed that Christiansen was able to quickly locate the suspect. He was described as wearing a ruck sack and carrying a blue dummy weapon.

"I told the suspect to turn away from the sound of my voice and lay on his stomach on the ground," Christiansen said.

Christiansen detained the individual once back-up personnel arrived on the scene. Then he started to wonder why the Wing Inspection Team wasn't showing up to validate his performance.

They weren't coming because it wasn't an exercise.

"I asked him for his identification and confirmed who he was," Christian said. "He was ruck marching as part of his physical training."

Upon questioning the suspect, security forces personnel were able to determine that this was a completely innocent situation where an Airman was conducting physical training with a "rubber ducky" -- the nickname for the fake, blue rubber rifle -- and a weighted ruck sack.

Overall, from the time the first call came in to the response and then subsequent release of the suspect, the response time was about 20 minutes, Christiansen said.
While the entire scenario turned out to be innocuous, it was important that people on base did not just run through the motions.

"The ability of our service members to treat every exercise as if it is real world is very important," Madrigal-Ames said. "It shouldn't take an inject card for me to know what to do."

Exercise and real world scenarios should be treated the same, Christiansen said. As proven last Wednesday, Team Mildenhall continues to maintain vigilance in its everyday routine regardless of exercise scenarios or real-world events.