In Navy's Largest Security Exercise, Seal Beach Station Stages Terrorist Attacks and a Gunman's Rampage

Inside the building, a woman shrieked. Men screamed, and gunfire cracked the air, echoing one shot after another.

Military police arrived to find a body lying motionless in the doorway. With guns drawn, they stepped over the body out of the afternoon sun and into the darkness where an unknown gunman awaited them and where the U.S. Navy’s largest security exercise was well under way Wednesday.

Throughout the week, the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station has been taking part in Solid Curtain, a nationwide navy security exercise testing base preparedness for every scenario from a terrorist attack to an attack by a lone gunman such as the Fort Hood shooting. It’s one of the largest security drills the Seal Beach base has ever taken part in, said Gregg Smith, spokesman for the naval weapons station.

The base opened a handful of its exercises to the media for the first time ever this week.

“We think it’s important for the community to understand that the base is being protected by professionals and that we are capable of defending the base from the outside threats in this world,” Smith said.

In one of two security exercises Wednesday, military police were called to respond to a shooting on the base.

‘The scenario is like the Fort Hood attack,” said Smith. “There will be a mix of people who have been shot, people who are trying to escape and the gunman. Our security guys won’t know who is who as they come into take care of the bad guys.”

Armed with modified weapons that shoot blue soap much like a paint gun, the military police arrived on scene to hear the shooting and screaming.

“The first guy who shows up basically moves to the sound of gunfire to prevent additional casualties,” said Lt. j.g Christopher Ambrosi, who heads the base’s security forces.

It’s a procedural shift stemming from the Columbine shooting, where victims continued to be shot and killed while police waited and coordinated their approach, said Ambrosi.

Master-at-arms Second Class Pedro Cervantes and his partner were the first to arrive on the scene Wednesday.

They stormed the building shouting, “Get down! Get down! Get down on the ground now!”

While Cervantes secured the bloodied victims, his partner continued farther into the building to find the shooter. Blinded by the darkness, he saw only the flashing muzzle of a gun being fired at him, and he took aim. He fired repeatedly, hitting the shooter several times in the chest.

“We’ve trained for this so much. We know what to do because it is ingrained in our memory,” Cervantes said. “This is what we do.”

The first thing they saw when they entered the building were victims, one of whom was trying to escape.

“We put him down on the ground and made sure he didn’t have any weapons,” Cervantes said. “We didn’t know who he was, and we didn’t want him turning and shooting us as soon as we passed.”

After dealing with the lone gunman, the security forces turned their sights on a simulated terrorist attack similar to the USS Cole bombing.

The naval weapons station loads, unloads and maintains weapons for a majority of the U.S. Pacific fleet. The base serves at least one ship a week, sharing the tiny Anaheim Bay with boat traffic heading in and out of Huntington Harbor. It is a challenging situation for base security because civilian boaters routinely whiz by. Security boats have mere seconds to respond from the time a boat enters navy restricted waters to the time that boat could reach the dock or the ship being unloaded.

In Wednesday’s exercise, a terrorist’s boat waited at the mouth of the bay before darting into the restricted waters attempting to evade two armed security boats.

“He wants to try to blow up the wharf here or the ship,” explained Smith. “The most difficult thing to do when any boat that comes in here is to learn their intent. In the USS Cole attack, the terrorists didn’t come in with guns blazing. They came in friendly.”

As the ‘terrorist boat’ approached the restricted area, two security boats converged on it, shouting orders over the intercom.

“You are in a restricted zone. You need to vacate the area. You need to vacate now.”

But the would-be terrorist ignored the warnings and gassed the boat toward the wharf, zigging and zagging to get past the security boats.

“A real incident wouldn’t have lasted this long,” said Smith.

“They would have quickly established intent and dealt with it,” he said, pointing the security boats’ machine guns.