Marines plan urban exercises

Marines plan urban exercises
Petersburg, two other cities will be used in simulated missions

BY PETER BACQUE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Sep 23, 2006

The Marines will be using Blackstone, Petersburg and Hopewell as training aids starting next week.

About 600 Marines and sailors will make four training forays into the communities over a week's time.

Residents may see Marines, armed Humvees and combat helicopters during the evening exercises, which the unit has coordinated with state, local and federal authorities, said Capt. Will Klumpp, a Marine spokesman.

The public might also hear gunfirelike sounds.

Each of the evening missions will involve fewer than 200 Marines, last less than two hours and be finished by 11 p.m., Klumpp said.

"The exercise will include a significant number of low-flying helicopters and other sights and sounds associated with military activity," the Marines said in a statement yesterday.

But, the Marines said, "It is important for residents to know that the exercise is no cause for alarm."

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., will be training to operate in urban environments its members could encounter abroad.

Without warning, the unit's Marines will be thrown into real-world-type missions -- such as a hostage rescue or an attack on a terrorist target -- that they will have to plan for quickly and conduct on the fly.

To add realism, contractors will play the roles of Middle Easterners in the exercise scenarios, Klumpp said in a telephone interview from Fort Pickett.

"The Marines will be engulfed in the culture they might be involved in overseas," he said. "It's more than going to a [rifle] range and firing weapons."

From Thursday through Oct. 5, the expeditionary unit will encamp at Fort Pickett, where most of its 2,200 members will be doing other forms of training, Klumpp said.

The Marines said they will make every effort to let residents around the urban training sites know when they will be in the area.

And "local law enforcement will be on hand to help ensure civilians do not inadvertently enter a training area," the Marines' statement said.

The Marines and the Army have long conducted similar urban exercises in the area.

The unit trained in the Richmond-Petersburg area in 1993, "so Marines are not strangers," Klumpp said.

The urban exercise is part of six months' training the 26th is undergoing as it readies to deploy in early 2007 with the Navy's Norfolk-based Bataan Strike Group.

New Orleans, Atlanta, Dayton Ohio, Jacksonville and Savannah, Ga., have recently hosted similar exercises.