The state National Guard trains for the possibility of a shooter within its facilities and is prepared to react, the Guard's liaison to the state told the News Journal Tuesday.
"The training is ongoing and constant," said Army Col. Dallas Wingate, the Guard's director of military support and the state liaison with the Delaware Emergency Management Agency. "It's how we do business now. We recognize that the biggest threat facing us today is the lone gunman kind of scenario."
Our A8 sidebar to Tuesday's front-page story on the horrific shootings inside the Washington Navy Yard the previous morning described how Dover Air Force Base trains for such a scenario. But we weren't able to get a lot of detail on how the state Army and Air Guard trains for this, as guard facilities are minimally manned on Mondays.
Unlike at Dover, the state Army Guard does not conduct active-shooter training that involves role players - the size of the facilities and cost being considerations - although the New Castle Air National Guard Base has done so, most recently in 2011, Wingate said.
Instead, the Guard's means of preparation combines uniformed and contracted security, and civilian police response, with what Wingate called an "overall operational stance" that includes training on individual responses and plans to close armories and secure weapons in the face of such threats.
"We have plans to deal with insider threats at each one of our armories in the entire state," Wingate said. "And depending on where the threat may be and where the key assets are located, we could do a number of things. We could add additional security measures; we have electronic security measures - a multitude of tools."
And while local police would eventually take the lead in responding to a internal threat - "We're not a law enforcement agency," Wingate said - the troops themselves would be the first line of defense, using an armory's or facility's stored weapons.
"We recognize that there's a point in time between the event actually occurring and the time you're going to get first responders," Wingate said. "If somebody's trying to make entry into one of our armories, for example, the individual knows that they have the right to protect themselves." He called it a "defensive posture."
"There's always going to be somebody who's armed and ready," he said.
After news of the D.C. shootings broke, the Guard's Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council met both in person and via conference call to discuss whether the shootings were an isolated incident or part of a more widespread attack on military facilities - as was done at Dover and, likely, every U.S. military base.
"Early on, the thinking was that this was a disgruntled employee - because he had immediate access, and those sorts of things," Wingate said. "That's why we determined it not to be an immediate threat to the Delaware Guard."
Later Tuesday, the Pentagon confirmed a CNN report that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will order a review of physical security and access "at all DoD installations worldwide." A senior Pentagon official told reporters that the review could be announced as early as Wednesday.
