What were the results of the terrorist excersize on Puget Sound?

Factual Questions
1

I just saw on CNN that they performed a terrorist excersize in which they had a ferry hijacked by mock terorrists who took the passengers prisoner. Swat teams came to board the ship, but the terrorists used a suicide bomber and booby traps to make it so that hostages would get killed if the swat team tried to save them.

The excersise looked really interesting from the footage, but unfortunately they didn’t tell how it worked out- I’m curious to know if the swat teams were successful, and how many hostages were ‘killed’ in the insuing firefight.

2

When did the exercise take place? If it was the one described in the December 17 Seatle Times, things didn’t go so well. The Seatle Times story is pretty interesting . . . I wish I could just post the whole thing, but I feel that would be frowned upon. What follows are a few quotes from the article and some paraphrasing:

“In a practice drill, half a dozen SWAT team police rush the front of a ferry where two of 10 terrorists hold 50 passengers hostage. The SWAT team yells for the terrorists to drop their weapons. The terrorists refuse. Mere seconds later, both terrorists are “killed,” covered with paint pellets. One hostage is shot several times.”

According to the story, nearby officials from various government agencies took notes. A USCG officer pointed at the explosives strapped to one of the terrorists and said, “In reality, they would’ve all been blown up.”

Among those who took part in the exercise were people from the USCG, local ferry system, and various police departments.

The article goes on to say: "Ten state troopers acting as terrorists for the day stormed the ferry in the morning, holding as hostages 50 volunteers who posed as passengers. . . . Had a real-life terrorist threat been handled the way it was yesterday, all the passengers probably would have died. Still, drill planners seemed pleased with the results of the training.

‘We made a lot of mistakes today, but that’s the reason we do the exercise,’ said Joe Nortz, ferry system operations director. ‘The value of this exercise is only as good as what we learned from it.’"

Then various people are quoted, and there are descriptions of cops running up stairs with semi-automatic paint guns, chasing around in speed boats, and using special tactics to board a ferry. Evidently, the exercise ended around the time a SWAT team member shot a “terrorist” who had a bunch of dynamite strapped to his body.

Is this the exercise you saw on CNN, Incubus? I didn’t notice a specific mention of Puget Sound in the article. When did this exercise take place? It does sound interesting.

3

It was the same one. I am pretty sure they mentioned it was on Puget sound. But isn’t that over on th east coast? Sorry my geography is a bit fuzzy…

When I saw that the terrorists had a suicide bomber, I figured it would be next to impossible for the swat team to win, since the suicide bomber could just blow up half the ship on a whim. Particularly if the bombs were set with a dead man switch- if he got hit/lost conciousness the bomb would go off.