Fort Monmouth drill validates NOPE's concern about proposed civilian housing at Earle and threat of base attack

Roughly a month after we blogged here about a hostage drill at Weapons Station Earle, we find Fort Monmouth conducting an emergency readiness drill, simulating a terror attack. Interesting, in that by 2012 there will presumably be no more U.S. Army mission at Fort Monmouth, but that's another story...

Our takeaway from Fort Monmouth's drill (read the full text of the story in today's Asbury Park Press), other than the emergency responders did such a great job that the commander wrapped up the exercise two hours ahead of schedule (Miller time!), is that the drill was designed to simulate a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a building on the base, fired by a terrorist from the parking lot of a nearby dentist's office!

"We never try to test the "powder puff' scenarios," said Michael Ruane of the
James Thomas Group, a garrison contractor that designed and ran Wednesday's
event.

NOPE recognizes the need of our nearby military bases to conduct emergency response drills, but the respective planning by the U.S. Navy for a hostage drill and the U.S. Army of a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the base suggest to us that opening an active U.S. military munitions facility (NWS Earle) to civilians is idiotic to the highest order.

The notion of opening an unimpeded, roughly 2-mile long access road to the Laurelwood houses at Earle from Rt. 34 in Colts Neck and cutting, in essence, right behind the extremely well guarded main gate at the Navy base flies in the face of reason, and will leave open the possibility of more than just a "drill" at one of our most important weapons installations.

Imagine, if you will, droves of unchecked cars coming and going to the Laurelwood homes, traversing the new "Alternate 4" road selected by the U.S. Navy, and the possibility of one car stopping along the shoulder of this new $12 million road (cordoned off from the active base by a mere 7 feet of rented security fencing but running squarely thru the base) to launch a grenade attack on a U.S. Navy train ready to move explosives to a U.S. Navy ship at the harborside base in Middletown, or perhaps to fire upon a building that houses active Navy service members or private contractors working within the confines of a supposedly secure Naval Weapons Station Earle...

How would Navy leaders in Washington explain to the U.S. public that a dozen of its own service members were killed because of its own stubbornness to get out of an 80s-era privatized housing contract?

Again, the options are: a) no unimpeded access route, no civilian housing at Weapons Station Earle, and diminished threat of an attack within the boundaries of the Navy base, or b) free access to Laurelwood for the 1,200 or more presumed civilian residents at Earle and ANY visitors from 2010-2040, compromised base security, and the possibility of a disaster at a strategically important mission.

YOU decide...attend our RALLY at Colts Neck High, Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 730pm, and visit our table at Tinton Falls Day, this Saturday, September 26 from 3p-7p, at the Sycamore Soccer Complex along Sycamore Avenue, next to Atchison School.