WASHINGTON — In the face of emergencies, military and civilian security personnel must be ready to defend and protect. Citadel Shield/Solid Curtain 2024 (CS-SC24), scheduled for February 5 through the 16th, is one of the Navy’s primary exercises for ensuring its security personnel have all the tools necessary to respond to changing and dynamic threats.
Naval installations in the National Capital Region, including Naval Support Activity (NSA) Washington, NSA Bethesda, NSA Annapolis, NSA South Potomac, and Naval Air Station Patuxent River, will participate in the yearly, two-part anti-terrorism and force protection exercise designed to test the effectiveness of the installations readiness and training programs.
“CS-SC24 is an enterprise-wide exercise meant to test all installations’ capacity to predict, respond to, mitigate, and recover from acts of homegrown and foreign terror,” said Phil Romeo, region program director of force protection for Naval District Washington. “It will involve traditional installations and off-installation activities such as recruiting and reserve centers. Our joint partners at Joint Task Force-National Capital Region will have some involvement in the exercise.”
During the first week of February 5 – 9, emergency responders on Navy installations will engage in Citadel Shield. During the first week, the field training will focus on the installation level with various scenarios such as active shooter, unauthorized base access, suspicious package, and unmanned aerial surveillance.
“The primary focus of the exercise is to test our responses as well as educate instillation tenants on how an act of terrorism may impact day-to-day operations at the local and regional level,” said Romeo.
The second week of February (the 12th through the 16th) is the Solid Curtain portion of the exercise, which will focus on various national-level scenarios. During this week, base force protection conditions or FPCON levels will change daily with training evolutions. Some scenarios may cause irregular traffic patterns or gate hours on the installations.
“During the exercise, Installation and region staff will assess exercise threat information and recommend how we should respond to these exercise injects. This may mean that some gates may be closed temporarily, ID checks may increase, roads may be closed or detoured, and some unforeseen impacts due to the exercise may occur,” said Romeo. “All persons (military, civilian, contractor, resident) should prepare for some changes during the exercise, and we ask that they remain flexible and understand that local sentries are responding to directions from their Chain of Command.”
[Photo above: VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (February 3, 2022) – Naval Air Station Oceana’s Security Forces participate in Citadel Shield Force Protection Exercise. Citadel Shield-Solid Curtain is an annual exercise that uses realistic scenarios to ensure U.S. Navy security forces maintain a high level of readiness to respond to changing and dynamic threats. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Megan Wollam)]
