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Sailor's tough duty: the terror watch

By MATTHEW DOLAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© December 15, 2002

NORFOLK -- It looked like a routine vehicle check until the passenger
started screaming.

``If I release this button, we all die!''

But petty officers
Benjamin Singleton
and Ray Sminkey
never fired a shot as
the terrorists sped
past them, down the
pier and toward their
cruiser, the Cape St.
George.

Seconds later the
ship was consumed
by an orange fireball.

``That guy just killed
380 of your people
and blew up a billion-

Fire or not? For the Navy sentry in a virtual-reality
simulator, two would-be bombers at his ship's pier
present a horrifying deilemma. Photo by Martin Smith-Rodden /
The Virginian-Pilot.

dollar ship!'' instructor Chief Petty Officer Boyd Hensley bellowed. ``Did
anyone ever tell you you might die on watch?''

Singleton, a 36-year-old ship
storekeeper, shook his head sheepishly.

``When you actually see it, well. . .'' he
said, his voice trailing off.

Welcome to the intense, and often
alarming, world of force-protection
training.

Navy leaders believe thousands of sailors like Singleton and Sminkey
must learn how to protect their ships and shipmates at home and at sea
from terrorist threats.

But two years after the deadly bombing of the destroyer Cole, few have
completed the series of new courses, worrying some who see the training
as long overdue.

No longer confined to the most elite units in the service, like the SEALs,
force-protection training has also been a struggle for many sailors who
don't feel at ease with hand-held weapons and close-quarters combat.

Rear Adm. Thomas W. Steffens, who was pulled out of retirement after
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said the Navy has been scrambling to meet
its new priorities.

``In the wake of 9/11, we pulled people from all walks of life in the Navy
and gave them a few weeks of training as a security force and plugged
them into the breach,'' said Steffens, special assistant to the Atlantic Fleet
commander for force protection.

``Every morning, they come in bright and early. They get issued weapons
and bullets. They get some guidance on the latest terrorist information.
They go stand their post or man their boats.

``This is not a typical day for most of our sailors.''

HIGH-TECH TRAINING

Singleton and Sminkey ran through the force-protection gantlet inside a
new simulator housed in a mobile trailer on a Norfolk Naval Station pier.
Known as PRISim, the $300,000 system projects mock terrorists on a
large video screen. Plastic bullets even fire back at sentries from the
trailer's carpeted walls.

Sailors training at PRISim and at a privately run center in northeastern
North Carolina praise these scenarios as frighteningly authentic.

``If it were up to me, this would be the No. 1 training'' for sailors, said
Petty Officer 1st Class Keith Rivers, 33, catching his breath after fending
off a mock takeover of a ship during an exercise at the Blackwater
Training Center in Moyock.

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Rivers and others said the true-to-life training serves as a wake-up call,
improving how they might react to future threats in ports and at sea.

``The message that we want everyone to understand is that force
protection is everyone's business,'' Steffens said.

It's a message the military has heard for years. Anti-terrorism and force-
protection training ``must be elevated to the same priority as primary
mission training,'' according to the Cole Commission report issued after
the October 2000 bombing of the Norfolk-based destroyer in Yemen.
Seventeen sailors died in that attack.

But it wasn't until the Sept. 11 attacks that the Navy upped the ante with a
two-week, armed-sentry course for thousands of regular sailors. They
have become the Navy's auxiliary security force, a stopgap measure until
the service can train enough full-time security personnel by 2005.

More than 2,100 sailors attended the armed-sentry course last year. Next
year, almost 5,000 sailors are expected to participate.

A more-advanced course on force protection also is growing, with 6,000
sailors to be trained by next year.

Training is not restricted to the most junior sailors. Five-hundred senior
officers have completed a course on mapping out and implementing
force-protection plans.

In addition to training sailors, the Navy is expanding its full-time security
force, known as masters-at-arms, from 1,500 to 9,000 members by 2005.
This cadre of military law-enforcement personnel will protect ships, shore
facilities, sailors and Marines.

Altogether, the Navy plans to spend $2.9 billion this fiscal year -- $1
billion more than last year -- on personnel, equipment and training related
to force protection.

The most recent advancement has come this year with high-tech
simulators and run-and-shoot camps operated by private contractors.

Virtual-reality trainers like the PRISim have ``forced us to train our people
harder,'' said Capt. Timothy P. Sprague, the commodore of a new Atlantic
Fleet mobile security force to safeguard ships making port visits here and
abroad.

``We run every guy through that PRISim van and we evaluate them
individually on maturity level, making the right decisions, voice
commands, weapons use,'' said Sprague, whose teams largely consist of
masters-at-arms.

Dave Philips, a former Chesapeake police officer who oversees the
Navy's five-year, $35 million contract for Blackwater, said instructors are
shocked that some sailors they teach ``have never held a firearm, except
for at boot camp.''

The goal -- running thousands of sailors through at least part of such

programs before their next deployment -- remains elusive.

Sailors aboard the carrier Harry S. Truman, for example, deployed from
Norfolk earlier this month without setting foot inside the PRISim trainer or
the Blackwater center, a sprawling site also used to train military special
forces, SWAT and other law-enforcement tactical teams.

While the Truman officers said their sailors received other training, they
also said their crew of 5,500 would have benefited from time in the
simulator.

A CULTURAL SHIFT

Despite a backlog of requests to use such facilities, senior officers insist
that the Navy is not deploying ill-equipped sailors.

Marine Col. Paul Cahill, deputy director of the Navy's Anti-Terrorism
Warfare Development Center, called the new courses ``icing on the
cake.''

``I don't think it's fair to say that they're not meeting core requirements,''
said Cahill, whose center is headquartered at Little Creek Naval
Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach. ``There are only a handful of courses
right now.''

Capt. Bill Daniels, director of the anti-terrorism warfare center, conceded
that ``in some cases, we are playing catch-up.''

Daniels said restrictions on when sailors are available for outside training
can be a problem. The 18 months before a ship deploys are filled with
numerous other training requirements.

Mastering the skills needed for force protection also marks a cultural shift
for the average sailor.

Starting in boot camp, the emphasis is on firefighting. The idea, officials
say, is to ensure that crews can contain damage and maintain combat
readiness.

``In their firefighting training, they see real smoke,'' said Hensley, who
works for the Navy's Afloat Training Group. Some instructors say that all
sailors should experience that same type of trial by fire when learning
how to safeguard against terrorist threats.

``No one has put them in this kind of stressful situation before,'' Hensley
said.

Not all of the sailors immediately understand why the training is
necessary.

``So what we were supposed to do?'' Seaman Darnell Kirkland asked
after he and his partner failed to discover a gun on a woman they were
searching during a Blackwater exercise.

``She's a civilian,'' said Kirkland, who has been in the Navy six months. ``I

wasn't going to treat her like she was a criminal.''

In another exercise, sailors in the armed-sentry course took their places
around a small wooden house. Instructors told trainees to treat the house
as an entry point to a naval base.

But the sailors struggled.

A woman dressed in a miniskirt, high heels and a long leather coat
approached. One young sailor was so timid that he barely touched
Blackwater employee Sherry Whitehurst when searching her. His
instructor quickly pointed out what can happen.

``We have a knife, we have a bomb, we have a gun and we have a box
cutter,'' said Gary Flannelly, pointing out all of the items Whitehurst had
hidden in her tight clothing.

Instructors said it's little surprise that most sailors don't know how and
when to use deadly force.

``When things go bad, they really go bad. And they really go bad quickly,''
Philips said.

Still, Philips said 90 percent of the sailors attending the Blackwater force-
protection course pass the basic qualifications.

Hensley said most trainees fail to use deadly force in the simulator,
despite attending a briefing on its proper application.

``It's not their fault,'' he said. ``We've never trained them this way.''

``IT'S A MATTER OF HONOR''

On a recent day pierside along the Cape St. George, Hensley conducted
his sessions with the brio of a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

``Get back! Get back! Drop that gun now!'' he yelled, showing the sailors
how to deal with a man who claims to be a contractor but pulls a firearm
from his toolbox.

He then addressed their fears and worries about potential discipline if
they flash their weapons.

`` `I wanted you to justify what you did,' they'll say. `You felt threatened,
so you shot him?' ''

Hensley asked Petty Officer 2nd Class Sminkey, 23, whether he saw a
weapon on the contractor.

``Not until he picked it up and started shooting.''

``If you did it right,'' Hensley said, ``he would have given up and it would
not have ended with shooting.''

Instructors said simple and loud commands can help defuse an innocent,
but potentially deadly, situation.

``You guys watch `COPS'? Do people do what the cops tell them to do?''
said Chief Petty Officer Randy Lester, another instructor inside the
trainer. ``You're trying to break through the adrenaline haze.''

After Sminkey and Petty Officer 1st Class Singleton successfully stop
another car in a different scenario, Hensley praised their restraint. A
passenger popped up from sleeping in the back seat of a car and
reached for something -- a cell phone, not a weapon -- inside his jacket.

``It could be the captain or his brother,'' Hensley said. ``I'm not trying to
make you a killer in here. I'm not trying to make you into a gunslinger.

``Threat or no threat? That's the question that has to keep rolling around
in your mind.''

Of the 1,300 sailors who have been through the bomb scenario, only 44
stopped the car. In those cases, the sentries were killed in the explosion,
but the ship was saved.

``That's not good odds,'' Hensley said. ``How do you sleep at night
knowing that?''

But then he reminded them of their duty.

``It's a matter of honor. `No one gets by me.' '' Hensley said. `` `I own this
base and no one gets by me. This is my post.'

``You should wonder: `How many watches have I stood and been
unprepared?' ''

Reach Matthew Dolan at