CAMP RIPLEY-The situation is a tactical nightmare.
An unknown number of active shooters are rooted into a multi-story building with a honeycomb of rooms to hide in and blind corners to take cover behind. The narrow, dark hallways smell of cordite from weapons fire and shell casings litter the floor. Every 3-5 seconds, another innocent civilian will be killed by the shooters.
And, the members of the response team can't speak the same language fluently.
Minnesota National Guard soldiers and their counterparts from the Norwegian Home Guard surmounted that problem Sunday, simulating the neutralization of active shooters, rescuing hostages and capturing barricaded suspects at Camp Ripley on Sunday during the culminating exercise of NOREX. It's an international military exchange between the U.S. and Norway that's lasted more than forty years, the longest-running exchange of its kind in the entire U.S. Department of Defense.
Their instructors-who doubled as the "bad guys" they had to fight against-were SWAT operatives from local law enforcement agencies across Minnesota, including Morrison County and St. Cloud.
ADVERTISEMENT
The exercises took place at the Combined Arms Collective Training Facility, a fake city made of empty buildings where soldiers can practice clearing structures like a school or a government administration complex.
Morrison County SWAT ran the active shooter exercise. Their commander, Sgt. Joel Gross, said the training conformed to the doctrine that first responders to a shooting in progress shouldn't wait for SWAT, but should go in themselves. He couldn't go into specifics when talking to media about the tactics being taught, but he did say it involved teaching the soldiers which specific stimuli they should look for in their environment, and how to respond once they found it.
It seemed as though it would be impossible to find anything, since the noise during the exercise overwhelmed all other stimuli. The participants' assault rifles fired blank rounds, and the instructors threw deafening training grenades for an additional twist in the scenario. Loudspeakers blared recordings of women and children screaming, intended to simulate as accurately as possible the stressors a response team will face. Ear-rending rock music like Drowning Pool and Mot'rhead also piped through the loudspeakers. It served both as an additional distraction and as a cue to begin the exercise: when the music started, so did the gunfire.
Sgt. Ole Christopher Holth was among the Norwegians taking part in the active shooter training. He said the scenario was "as bad as it gets," with plenty of stressful conditions for the soldiers to overcome. Despite this, the Norwegians can adapt as the situation changes, he said.
"You just have to be fluid like water," he said.
The possibility of an active shooter has been tragically realized in Norway in the past, giving additional significance to the Home Guard's participation in the exercise. While the recent shooting at Pulse nightclub was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, one of the deadliest in the world occurred on the lake island of Utøya in Norway in 2011. Sixty-nine people were killed as a result of the shooting, 77 in the attack as a whole.
Charging through the smoke
During the barricaded suspect exercises, the St. Cloud SWAT team showed the Norwegians to use a formidable arsenal of gadgets and tools to breach doors, scout ahead, and shield their advance.
ADVERTISEMENT
An imaginary traffic stop had gone awry, and a suspect had shut himself up in a house after taking shots at officers with a .223 semiautomatic rifle.
Together with Americans, the Norwegians "stacked up"-got in a tight, connected line-behind a Humvee and advanced through a column of smoke, from a grenade thrown moments earlier. Shots rang out after they breached the door, and after a few minutes, they had the hostile in custody.
1st Lt. Sidsel Berg of the Home Guard said the Norwegians don't place as much importance on their armed forces as Americans, since "it's a very safe country in a small corner" of the world. However, Norway takes its commitment to NATO, and global security in general, very seriously. Military service is compulsory for all Norwegians.
Sidsel said they don't have anything like Camp Ripley there, though.
"They have this whole city, it's huge," Berg said of the CACTF. "None of us have seen such a city before for training a military unit. We can have one or two houses (in Norway), but this a city."
She was also impressed with the patriotism she saw at Lakes Jam, which the Norwegians attended as part of the cultural portion of the NOREX exchange.
"We were talking about it afterwards, how proud you are of your country and your army," she said. "It's something we envy a little bit."
In addition to Lakes Jam, the Norwegians had social mixers with the Americans and will go on excursions to Duluth and Minneapolis next week.
ADVERTISEMENT
While most of the foreign troops taking part in the exercise Sunday were Norwegian, soldiers from Sweden and Denmark were also present.
Capt. Erik Karlsson commands a company of the Swedish Army's Life Regiment of Grenadiers, and said he'd take the lessons learned at Camp Ripley back to his own troops to practice in Sweden. The Swedish Army is geared to fight against foreign threats, not necessarily "domestic operations" like those focused on during Sunday's training.
It was Karlsson's first time in the United States, and he said Minnesota's climate and natural surroundings reminded him of home.
"It doesn't feel like that I'm coming to another country, actually," he said.
ZACH KAYSER may be reached at 218-855-5860 or Zach.Kayser@brainerddispatch.com . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZWKayser .
