Holding their own: Air Force police trained in defense of military installations

Jace Radke

Friday, May 24, 2002 | 10:53 a.m.

Leaning back behind a .50-caliber "Ma Deuce" machine gun, Air National Guardsman James Nicholson pumps rounds through the two-inch armor of a personnel carrier 300 yards away in the Nevada desert.

The staff sergeant is one of 179 soldiers undergoing a two-week training program at Nellis Air Force Base in which security force personnel learn how to defend military runways and installations against everything from a curious civilian trying to scale a fence to terrorists attacking.

"It's awesome training, and with what's going on in the world now, it's definitely needed," Nicholson said as he learned how to use heavy weaponry on the Nellis Range recently. "We had the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, so we know suicide bombings and attacks happen at military installations.

"It could happen wherever we end up being deployed."

Preventing attacks like the one on Khobar Towers -- a U.S. military apartment building in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where 19 were killed and 500 wounded by a suicide truck bomber -- is the mission of Expeditionary Readiness Training, or ExpeRT.

The Air Combat Command training is available only at Nellis and is one of the last stops for security force personnel -- the Air Force's version of military police -- before they are deployed to bases and airports around the world.

"This is the only place to get this training for Air Combat Command cops, and most of the people that come through here are usually deployed within 30 to 90 days," said Capt. John Grimm, who supervises ground combat training at Nellis. "We have a very important mission to ensure that the Air Force's resources and people are safe and secure and can operate in a threat-free environment."

Air Force personnel and Air National Guard members ranging from major to airman are currently going through the course. Grimm's training officers run about 15 courses a year, each with about 200 participants.

The course teaches defense tactics, sweeping through buildings and urban environments, how to use heavy weaponry in defense of a base and how to detect explosives or other evidence of possible terrorist attacks.

The class ends with a three-day exercise in which the pupils defend the Indian Springs airfield, off U.S. 95 about 55 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from everything that Grimm and the instructors can throw at them. During the exercise both sides will wear laser sensors that register hits from the blank rounds that they will be firing.

"We'll simulate trying to sneak a bomb through in a truck, and attack the base with a squad of 13 people," Grimm said. "There will be scenarios with host nation people and civilians trying to get on the base, and they'll have to put into practice what they've learned."

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 security at military installations has taken on added significance, and the ExpeRT training has adapted, Grimm said.

The training, which has been going on at Nellis in one form or another since 1981, was changed in December. In the past the training took place on the range, but classes would defend the tents they were sleeping in rather than an actual airport.

"They needed to be able to see what it is actually like to run security at a hardened facility," Grimm said. "Now they have to train on an active facility and they have to interact with the working personnel there.

"We've also added more scenarios involving host nation people, civilians and terrorist attacks."

Besides learning the ropes around the runways at Indian Springs, the soldiers are familiarized with weaponry and run through what the trainers call "the city."

The city is a group of 12 cement-block buildings that stand out in an otherwise empty stretch of desert. There, soldiers learn how to do security sweeps in an urban environment. Much of the training is done at night using night vision goggles.

The Air Force is in the early planning stages of adding a mock control tower and other buildings to the training area in the next five years.

Staff Sgt. Doug King runs the heavy weaponry training, teaching the soldiers what they need to know to operate .50-caliber and M-60 machine guns as well as an Mk-19, a machine gun grenade launcher that can fire more than 325 rounds a minute.

"People think of cops running around with little guns, but we have some pretty impressive weapons," King said. "The idea is to slow down whatever is coming your way and keep them from damaging the installation."

A .50-caliber is the weapon of choice for Staff Sgt. Scott Vesperman, another training officer.

"This baby fires rounds at 2,080 mph and can penetrate a two-inch armored plate," Vesperman said. "It's anti-tank and pretty much anti-everything else too."

Nellis and Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio are the only two Air Force facilities that have heavy weapons ranges, and Nellis is the only Air Combat Command base that can accommodate the weapons.

Another unique aspect about Nellis serving as the home for the ExpeRT training is its location, said Staff Sgt. Chris Tschirhart, who likes to think of security forces as the army of the Air Force.

"In most facilities the ranges are concrete with shade, but out here all we have are the rocks and the sun," Tschirhart said. "This desert is probably the most realistic example of what they will find in the Middle East."

A deployment to the Middle East is a possibility for Nicholson and the others currently in the training, and Nicholson said the more he can do to prepare, the better he'll feel.

"You don't really know where they are going to send you, so that's a little hard on the family, but it has been that way since Sept. 11," said Nicholson, who has a wife and four children in Northern California. "We try to enjoy the training, and get in lots of repetition and practice."