SEALS on Public Land

[GoGriz]

this sounds all right at face value, like something we could all support, and then I remember that the Air Force is constantly trying to take over and close off tens, if not hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in the desert southwest to add on to what is already an enormous amount of bombing range in the region that is inaccessible or highly restricted.

That said, the people trying to stop the SEALs in the park sound like Karens.

Agreed that there is a limit to how and when, as well as the Karen’s in this case. My thoughts are that if the boots on the ground guys feel that a specific area that is in someway public would help them replicate something they might encounter in the field, and they are only training for a specific time/ duration, with minimal impact to the area, then locals feeling creeped out or afraid of seeing gun toting military members for a few days/ weeks in an area should not have the power to stop them, unless there was a really legit reason. Once it comes down to the specifics of policy and implementation there are always exceptions and one offs, just seems to make sense at least to me as a broad statement when framed with keeping our Military as polished as they need/ want to be.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Reminds me of an incident about 2007 or so.

I was part of a crew building a riding arena on the frontage road close to the Tarkio exit off I-90.

There had been some Blackhawks flying around the area for a couple of days and we didn’t think too much about it.

I was up on the trusses nailing roof purloins when I heard the property owners brother, Darrin, yell at me. I looked up to see blacked out civilian style Hummers with flashing lights, stopped on the road below us, behind a car and a bunch of guys in uniform with AR’s pointed at a couple of guys who had their hands behind their heads.

My immediate concern was the fact that several of those guns were pointed in my general direction as our crew was working about 100 yards behind the guys with thei hands in the air. If something kicked off, I didn’t want to be in the line of fire. It only took me a few seconds to get down off that roof!

As I got down, I looked over to see the Darrin digging through his truck console and come back out with a .44 mag revolver. He had his door open and was taking cover behind his truck with pistol in hand. Not pointed towards anyone but ready for action if it came our way.

Nothing came our way and the guys with guns soon got the “perps” into custody and put them into the Hummer. About a minute later a white van came driving up into the driveway and a camo’ed Army officer rolled down his window and apologized for the disruption. He explained they were practicing vehicle interdiction and takedowns for an upcoming deployment to Iraq and that the takedown was supposed to have happened about a 1/2 mile down the road out of sight of any residences. However, the guys role playing the “bad guys” decided to make the training more realistic and ran the road block, forcing them to improvise and chase them to get them stopped.

When the Darrin held up his pistol and exclaimed, “I was ready to back you up if they ran our direction!”, the officer burst out laughing and thanked him for being ready to assist.

Explanation complete, he apologized again for any inconvenience and wished us a good day before heading back down the lane and continued training.

We went back to work.

I have to wonder if they ended up telling the “bad guys” that a crazy Montana redneck was ready to take them out if they had run our way?

Our initial reaction to the whole thing was we thought it was a drug bust going down or a law enforcement action. I think that’s why Darrin grabbed his pistol.

 

[fishing4sanity]

Here at the farm we get fairly regular fly-overs from fighter jets, helicopters and the big cargo jets. I enjoy seeing them. On the low fly-bys I sometimes wave, no idea if at that speed they ever see it, but I appreciate the work/service they do. If they ever want to come out on a windy day and practice for a sand storm, I'd let them. I hate wind and this is a tough place to live somedays for a guy who hates wind.