Why the concern for the intruders well-being? As mentioned, there are multiple levels of security and warning. If someone perisits in attempting to enter secured areas, there is no-one to blame but themselves. Off the bastard, bury him deep, and keep on keeping on. The only possible reason to take him alive is to find out who he works for.
For starters, Area 51 isn’t a base like Fort Bragg where tens of thousands of soldiers reside; it’s a testing facility, staffed pretty much only by the people who are conducting the tests and the security personnel who keep the looky-loo’s out.
Even if it were housing a couple of divisions of soldiers, those soldiers would not all be on security detail; they’d be off doing other soldier things, like marching, eating, polishing their guns, making lewd videos (CVN personnel only) or training the dogs to hide bees in their mouths. If your assigned mission is to prevent unauthorized access to restricted areas, and the importance of success is such that you are authorized to use deadly force without having been threatened with same, I don’t believe your official list of resources will include calling upon random soldiers who happen to be passing by and aren’t particularly familiar with your team’s mission or tactics.
Yes, it would be nice to question intruders, but not at the expense of failing your primary mission (preventing access). If the intruder has clearly been disabled and prevented from gaining access, you certainly don’t walk over and put a final round into his skull, but before he’s been disabled, it doesn’t make sense to go easy on him and risk having him gain access.
I’m guessing that the breakdown of intruders at Area 51 is something like 1 “serious” spy for every 2,000 UFO nuts/stoned teenagers. It’s probably more fun for the guards to surround a group of stoned teenagers with Humvees, point guns at their heads, throw them on the ground, yell at them insanely, etc until they shit themselves and then let them go than to actually shoot them in the head.
Funniest thing I ever saw waiting to get onto the Norfolk Operations Base in VA was some guy who was arguing with the gate guard, and finally made a break for it to run in… a small unit of marines out for PT were jogging by and dogpiled on the guy before he got more than about 20 feet inside the gate. [This was back in about 88 or 89, he was some sort of save the whales dude, back then was some sort of random protesting going on about the damage active sonar did to whales]
Certainly the gate guards could have shot him, but the ignominy of being dogpiled by sweaty marines was just hysterically funny to watch.
As someone who guarded, and supervised guards, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, I can attest that “deadly force authorized” is real. At least in the USAF, these signs are posted in Restricted Areas, which are permanent or temporary areas setup to protect assets labeled Priority Resources. These can be anything from a communications building to a C-5A aircraft.
Like others mentioned, for fixed resources such as a building, there are typically multiple layers of physical barriers such as fencing and then the building exterior. But for some assets, like a parked aircraft or missile launch pad, the perimeter fence or ropes may be the only barrier before actually encountering the asset itself. In those cases, I have no doubt that, absent a quick and reliable alternative, deadly force would be used against someone breaching the exterior fence - that’s what we trained them to do.
I remember a joke from long ago abou English policemen:
“Stop!.. or I shall yell ‘Stop’ again!”
I believe we might discuss different situations here. If I’m guarding a road block on a road leading to a military facility (around which there’s a second perimeter with machine gun nests which are manned at any kind of alert for instance), and there’s a cilivian walking up to it along the road, surely you wouldn’t instantly open fire. You would order the person to stop and then make sure the person knows you will fire if he does not stop, but keeps walking. To immediately shoot to kill that person, do you really mean that’s what you supposed to do according to Marine standards of procedure? Sounds a little bit “gung-ho” to me. If this person come running at you with his hand inside his jacket or something, naturally you will stop him without the warnings etc, but that is not the typical encounter at a road block or fence or whatever we are guarding.
Yes, obviously. But if you are going to actually shoot after the warning, you shoot to disable (often killing). You don’t fire warning shots or try to shoot them in the hand hoping to disable them.
I thought English Bobbies carried whistles. Hence the warning, “Stop, or I shall toot!”
dnr
I never said anything about shooting them in the arm. One shot in the air over their head - just to make sure they heard you, as well as to alert the rest of the base - and then start aiming shots roughly toward the knees area.
Although I haven’t been to Area 51, I’ve been to a number of secure test facilities. While all are generally well-guarded, the guards are mostly contractors. At multi-service installations or non-military installations that house nuclear facilities like EBR-2 the guards are frequently provide via the Department of Energy (versus Department of Defense for military bases). As pointed out, Area 51 is part of the Nevada Test Range and is largely open space. Any intruder would be spotted by surveillance long before they could approach the facilities area, and unless they displayed lethal force would probably simply be surrounded, detained, and released or prosecuted for trespassing as appropriate. The “Use of deadly force is authorized” is mostly just CYA in case someone does get tagged for being incredibly stupid.
Paralleling Kiber’s experience, the only time I’ve actually seen a facility guarded by military personnel who pointed weapons if not directly at me at least in my general direction was in a facility where they were dismantling ICBM reentry vehicles. I have no doubt they had heavier backup out of sight but on call as well. Nuclear security is generally taken very seriously, and the occasional slip-up is a probably career-ender right up to the flag level.
Stranger
From what I remember from the Rules of Engagement when I was in Kuwait for guard was something along the lines of shout, show, shoot. So you would call out a warning to stop, show your intent to use lethal force (eg rack the bolt on your M16 to chamber a round), then shoot.
And we are saying that if you start your own military, you can use those as your rules.
But in DoD that isn’t the way it is. There are no warning shots, and no knee shots.
Deadly force is authorized to protect all the alien bodies collected there. Think of what would happen if the secret got out. Again.
Sorry its now shout, show, shove, shoot, shoot. Shout a warning, Show weapon/intent, shove the person back, shoot a warning shot, shoot to kill. If its a vehicle checkpoint then its shout, show, shoot, shoot, shoot. The last three are for warning shot, shoot the engine block, shoot the driver. Nothing in the escalation of force says you can’t jump right to deadly force if warranted. But warning shots are certainly part of the rules of engagement (in general terms of course ROE changes from place to place, mission to mission. I would never mention anything more specific or anything that can’t be easily found on the internet). As a part time soldier and full time cop warning shots are against my religion. I was always taught that you own that bullet once it leaves the barrel. If you are shooting over someones head you have no control over where it will land or who it will land in.
I’m more concerned about those cell phone towers which the NSA use to beam messages directly into your brain. (And I ran out of tin foil yesterday…)
Since when?
From my reading of various history books, it seems that 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 80 years ago, virtually any citizen could visit virtually any military base/fort any time he wanted to, at will, and the civilian could wear his gun too.
When did the military stop letting civilians enter bases at will ?
When were civilians first prohibited from bringing in a gun?
When were guards first allowed to shoot civilians/intruders entering an army fort/base?
Umm…what?
That’s a rather extraordinary claim. Under what circumstances would any random citizen be welcome in a secure military facility, at any time in history? Could a 13th-century peasant freely visit the Tower of London?
I’ve never heard of this and would love to see cites for it. I can see it as a general rule or that the places where you could actually do much harm visiting would be far fewer, but I really doubt they’d let just anyone walk anywhere. It would pretty much defeat the entire point of having guards in the first place, as it were.
Oh my God, I just realized what your username is… Shmendrik, haha! Classic.