Navy Creeping Up : Mock Invaders to Test West Coast Readiness

Invading commandos in your back yard? Not to fear, the Navy knows.

Even if you see them creeping into Anaheim Bay, the Navy says, don’t be alarmed. The invaders are all part of an exercise to test the Navy and Coast Guard’s ability to handle a coastal invasion. About 80,000 people are involved in the action, which began Monday and will continue until Sept. 22 from Seattle to San Diego.

The exercise is designed to test the readiness of the Maritime Defense Zone, a network of Coast Guard and Navy ships activated during wartime to defend coastal waters out to 200 miles from shore, said Navy spokesman Tom Thomas.

Any “attackers” who may be storming local beaches in the next week will not be armed with live ammo, Thomas said. They would only carry what the Navy calls Miles Gear, a sophisticated form of laser tag. The goal is to repel enemy attacks and capture and interrogate enemy forces, Thomas said. Details of the exercise are kept secret so that the element of surprise is preserved.

Navy Cmdr. David Bernstein said of the exercise: “Don’t think in terms of an invasion.” The action will simulate “low level conflict or a low intensity conflict, largely invisible to the general public. We do not expect a full-fledged Russian invasion of California.” In the exercise and in real life, an invasion would probably be secret, Bernstein said.

The Navy is particularly “vulnerable at its marshaling facilities,” Berstein said. The Seal Beach U.S. Naval Weapons Station serves as a resupply dock, providing fuel, munitions and people to the Pacific Fleet, Berstein said, so it is critical to defend. “It’s easy to stop operations in a harbor if you know what you are doing.”

Bernstein is part of the “white team,” which is responsible for umpiring the exercise. The good guys defending the coast are the blue team, and the invaders are the orange team.

“The blue team is kept completely uninformed,” said Coast Guard spokesman Jim Milbury. The idea, Milbury said, is to see how well the team responds to surprise attacks.

In order to simulate actual wartime conditions, Bernstein said, the Navy staged anti-war demonstrations at various locations throughout Long Beach Harbor on Monday. Even phony news stories were circulated in Navy and Coast Guard offices.

In a similar exercise at the Seal Beach station in 1986, Ron Sheridan, who participated in the exercise, ended up suing the Navy, claiming that he was beaten by an elite Navy combat team that had captured him at his home as a part of the exercise. Sheridan eventually received about a $65,000 settlement from the Navy, said Donald O’Kula, Sheridan’s lawyer. O’Kula said “the Navy never admitted to any wrongdoing, but the money does say something.”

Thomas said this year’s exercise is “a completely different scenario.”

He went on to say the Navy “cannot stress safety enough in these exercises. In every single briefing safety is stressed. We try to be as realistic as possible, but safety is paramount.”