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Navy prepares for active shooter situations with annual security exercise

Citadel Shield-Solid Curtain focuses on force protection. That training may have paid off Friday at NAS Oceana when a gunman was subdued within five minutes.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Navy prepares for active shooter situations with training every year called  "Citadel Shield-Solid Curtain."

It's a two-week anti-terrorism and force protection exercise conducted on all Navy installations in the continental United States. Drill organizers set up various worst-case scenarios, with the idea being to enhance training and readiness of Navy security personnel so that they're ready when it's the real thing.

"It's the training and the readiness of our security forces that we're looking at, to really make sure that we've got out tactics, techniques and procedures down pat," said Captain Jonathan Kline, commander of Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads.

Friday's domestic shooting at Naval Air Station Oceana, in which one sailor was shot and the gunman was killed by base security forces within the first five minutes, resurrects memories of the Washington Navy Yard shooting in 2013. Twelve people were killed that day.

One year later in 2014, an assailant got through Gate 5 and Naval Station Norfolk and reached the USS Mahan at Pier One. Both that gunman and a responding Navy Master-at-Arms were killed. And also that same year, a knife-wielding sailor stabbed another sailor eight times at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth.

In 2017 at Oceana, a sailor was shot and killed by a base security officer, after the sailor crashed his vehicle through the back gate.

Navy leaders say it's critical to learn from these incidents, and they say exercises like Citadel Shield-Solid Curtain can only help.

"This is an example of leveraging some of the painful lessons of the past to ensure that we are better prepared, better postured to protect our people," said Rear Admiral Chip Rock, Commander, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic.

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