Helicopter strafing run over Miami??

[Scarab]

This is pretty unsettling. Why are they doing training like this over populated areas?

 

Downtown Miami's Black Helicopters reagancoalition.comPolice state?

[Nomad110]

It's recruitment exercise. 2,000 people out drinking on the streets said "That is freaking awesome, I'm joining the Army tomorrow!"

[UgleeBarnacle]

If I'm not mistaken, I thought I saw a couple of little birds after the blackhawk flew by. It very well could have been a recruitment exercise, but the Nightstalkers did something like this a few years ago in downtown Denver. And after all, they train how they fight...

[Sonic04GT]

Wish I had a dollar for every time that guy said chopper.

 

And they're probably doing it because the only way to train for situations in an urban environment is to train in an urban environment.

[Dnr032]

Yep, they did this in downtown Atlanta several years ago. Not a big deal. The news media tried to make it into something, but really, not a big event.

 

It is not a recruiting exercise, but an urban combat training event. The local and State police are usually involved with a ground-based scenario also.

[Sonic04GT]

Yep, they did this in downtown Atlanta several years ago. Not a big deal. The news media tried to make it into something, but really, not a big event.

 

It is not a recruiting exercise, but an urban combat training event. The local and State police are usually involved with a ground-based scenario also.

Anyone catching onto a pattern? Atlanta, Miami? At least they're doing it over "less-than-desirable" areas of the country

[Flying Pig]

It provides for decent training that cant be done at a base mock up training area. When I was in the Marines, several of the snipers ( I was not a sniper) went out with a large metro PD and trained in downtown. People got wind of it and it was the police state training to kill its own people. They were doing training on high rise buildings, rappelling, moving through tunnels etc etc.

 

Reality of the situation...... One of the sniper Sgts was applying with the department and was trying to get his name out there so he managed to set up a training day with the SWAT unit. I don't know anything about this scenario in Atlanta, but lets face it, given the areas the US military is operating in these days, the need to train in a real city has value. Firing the blanks as they flew over??? That was a little odd though. For those who have taken the helicopter route in to Van Nuys, youve flown between the two sky scrapers.... whats even cooler is to be on the ground watching 10 Cobra Helicopters do it! The comments from the people on the street are priceless. Everything from "AMERICA!!!" to "Run...... theyve turned on us!"

 

THe reality of the situation.... just a bunch of Marines trying to get back to home to Pendelton and taking a short cut across Class B to the shoreline.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Flying Pig

[avbug]

Years ago before I deployed, we were doing a lot of training for covert surveillance. We did it all over civillian areas at night. We'd follow cars on the highway, watch people in the dark, and track and report people who moved from their home to a supermarket or any number of other scenarios. we'd have targets set upon properties throughout the area; our mission was to locate the property and use methods to avoid detection while giving detailed reports on what we saw.

 

It could have been easily misconstrued as conducting surveillance on civillians, which was not the intent of the exercises. It was directly related to work we did in foreign locations, which frequently involved covertly following vehicles and people, and surveilling houses, meeting locations, weapons caches, and so forth. We did a lot of electronic surveillance, too, gathering intelligence in various classified ways, nearly always with people who had a lot riding on not getting caught. We had a lot riding on catching them. We weren't at all interested in the lives of the people stateside who we followed; we weren't completing dossiers on them. They were simply random test samples who we used for the exercises, much like we use numbers when doing math problems. We weren't collecting them or their data. If we could read their license place from a great distance, that's what we did, but it wasn't turned in anywhere or recorded. It was simply an exercise.

 

Many agencies use these practices in the wild in urban environments. Pursuing people or a vehicle, for example, is often done simply by following people and cars without being detected. It's done this way from the air and on the ground. The subject is none the wiser and has no reason to care. It's a far cry from tapping phones and monitoring electronics without a warrant or without authorization under the Patriot Act. Those are invasions of privacy which must be restricted unless specifically and narrowly authorized by legal means. Surveilling people out in the open is another matter, and is quite legal.

 

Training over crowded freeways while firing blanks, however is another matter. I'd fully understand if someone on the ground, not properly informed of the situation, returning live fire. Don't go waving a gun around in public and not expect trouble.

[iChris]

This is pretty unsettling. Why are they doing training like this over populated areas?

 

Downtown Miami's Black Helicopters reagancoalition.comPolice state?

 

It’s not about any one president, Barack Obama, Bush, and prior administrations before, have all incrementally eroded policy regarding Posse Comitatus (18 USC § 1385), with new laws like the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

 

The Constitution was setup to protect and preserve “We The People's” Power over the State (The Government), by limiting the State’s power. The State is a servant of the people. The power resides in the people. What we see now, in our faces, is the State (controlled by small financial elite) moving to consolidate their power and relegate us to indentured servants of the State.

 

Take note of whose powers are being expanded and whose rights and freedoms are continually being limited.

 

This was also covered in a past post: Blue Thunder time in LA

 

America is a Constitutional Republic . . . NOT a Democracy

 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she was briefed before the release of a controversial intelligence assessment and that she stands by the report, which lists returning veterans among terrorist risks to the U.S.

 

But the top House Democrat with oversight of the Department of Homeland Security said in a letter to Ms. Napolitano that he was “dumbfounded” that such a report would be issued.

 

“This report appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans - including war veterans,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in his letter sent Tuesday night.

 

The letter was representative of a public furor over the nine-page document since its existence was reported in The Washington Times on Tuesday.

 

In her statement Wednesday, Ms. Napolitano defended the report, which says “rightwing extremism” may include groups opposed to abortion and immigration, as merely one among several threat assessments. But she agreed to meet with the head of the American Legion, who had expressed anger over the report, when she returns to Washington next week from a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border. Napolitano stands by controversial report

 

 

A Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment equates gun owners with violent terrorists and states that radical extremists are “stockpiling” weapons in fear of an Obama administration gun ban.

 

This newly uncovered document is just the latest in a long sordid line of training manuals in which the federal government characterizes millions of American citizens as potentially violent terrorists who are a threat to law enforcement.

 

The document is entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (PDF link) and was released just a few days ago. The paper is labeled Law Enforcement Sensitive and states, “No portion of the LES information should be released to the media, the general public, or over non-secure Internet servers. Release of this information could adversely affect or jeopardize investigative activities.”

Edited February 2, 2013 by iChris

[Helipilot PTK]

Conspiracy theorists have a field day with this stuff.

[iChris]

Conspiracy theorists have a field day with this stuff.

 

When most mainstream media outlets discuss conspiracy theories, it is usually to debunk the views of dissenting and critical thinkers who are routinely denounced as simplistic, paranoid or worse.

 

You have frequently seen the mantra questioning their motives and conclusions as if the idea of people or officials acting together covertly to advance their interests in illegal ways is something new in history.

 

The U.S. has a long history of conspiracies.

 

Conspiracy Theories” vs. the Real World of Financial Crime: Bankers Face Prosecution For Conspiracy

 

The 1913 conspiracy that plagues us today, The Federal Reserve:

 

http://youtu.be/PKmqAX0Fqw0

 

http://youtu.be/KX8FLh61iVw

Edited February 2, 2013 by iChris

[avbug]

It's one thing to operate in public airspace and look, or tail, or follow. It's one thing to receive permission to use an urban area for training, against opponents or participants who are part of that training exercise.

 

It's entirely another to fly over someone's house or alongside their vehicle on the freeway, and open fire with a weapon, whether it's got blanks or not.

 

Imagine if a soldier showed up at my door, leveled a weapon, and I heard it discharge. His failure to drop me on the spot, because he used a blank, would be answered by as many rounds out of my HK45C as it took to end that little conflict on the spot. He carried blanks for his exercise. I don't know its an exercise. I don't carry blanks. You can guess the outcome.

 

Flying over a population while even simulating the discharge of a weapon is inviting not only discussion and rancor against that activity, but also return fire. It's not a wise act.

 

Many moons ago during an exercise over Texas, an F-100 shot down a B-52 during a training exercise. It wasn't supposed to be possible during that evolution, but it happened. My kids learned at an early age not to point even a toy firearm at a person or animal, and we always take the position that a weapon is loaded.

 

The military trains with blanks to increase the realism of training, but any time a weapon is pointed at someone, one must always give full consideration to the potential of destroying whatever the front sight of that weapon covers. In this case, it may be civillans. The military exists for the civillian population; it's bought and paid for by the civillian population. There's no need, nor justification, for shooting over the heads of a civilian population or for pointing weapons at or near a civilian population and calling it "training." Force on force training, especially using automatic weapons and aircraft, isn't to be done and shouldn't be done in populated areas, especially where the population isn't part of the training exercise (and doesn't know about the training exercise).

 

It smacks too much of training against a civilian population.

 

There's a big difference between the population of this country and that of any other against whom the military might consider taking action. As a whole, we the people are far, far better armed than any other nation on earth. That, more than any other factor, including a standing military, is a key element to why we remain free...and included in that statement is the most principal of all; free of our own government. The Second amendment is one of the most crucial of all to our ongoing liberty, and should the government (et al) elect to consider changing that degree of freedom or taking action against the population, the government and all her agencies and departments would do well to remember the pervasive nature of our second amendment. It wasn't just meant to protect us as citizens from foreign invaders, but from the domestic ones as well.

[Nearly Retired]

The type of thing that happened in Miami also went on in Houston just this past week. These joint military/civilian exercises are very deliberate. I'm not one of these rabid conspiracy types, but the government IS sending its citizens a message. And I think I know what that message is, given all that's been going on since the Connecticut school shooting.

 

This is very, very disturbing.

[Velocity173]

People on YouTube calling it a prelude to Marshall Law. Lol! Just SOAR doing urban training. They weren't even that low.

[Rotortramp]

Preparing for the impending zombie apocalypse.

[nightsta1ker]

I can't keep my mouth shut about this one. The 160th does training like this all over the world with US and foreign forces. They do urban training, mountain training, jungle training, desert training, water training. They train with SEALS, Delta, Rangers, PJs, MARSOC, and do joint excercises with foreign military's. None of this is classified or secret. It's nothing new and its certainly nothing to be frightened about. In fact, I suspect budget cuts will likely reduce the frequency of these training events soon. Having been a part of many of them during the last 10 years, all over the country and the world, I can say this is not conspiracy theory stuff.

[Fred0311]

I brushed this off as good training and conspiracy bs but they shouldn't be firing blanks around the public... and thats the only thing that makes me raise an eyebrow.

[ridethisbike]

I'm with Fred, NR and avbug on this one. You can still pull the trigger with no rounds of any kind in the chamber, and still get the full effect. Especially in an urban environment like that. There's just no need for it.

 

nightsta1ker... those training events you were part of, did you guys ever fire live or blank rounds over the heads of an unsuspecting populous? I'd venture a guess to say no, but would much rather hear it from the horses' mouth.

[Velocity173]

I'm with Fred, NR and avbug on this one. You can still pull the trigger with no rounds of any kind in the chamber, and still get the full effect. Especially in an urban environment like that. There's just no need for it.

 

nightsta1ker... those training events you were part of, did you guys ever fire live or blank rounds over the heads of an unsuspecting populous? I'd venture a guess to say no, but would much rather hear it from the horses' mouth.

Who said they were firing blanks over the heads of civilians? The sound of blanks occurred when little birds were flying. We don't know if it was them or some dude on the ground. Could have been the Black Hawk further up over an unpopulated area. Blanks from an M-240 are quite loud and could have been fired over the water a mile away. Could have been fired from one of the areas that were blocked off from civilians. Although in regular Army we trained in Hawks on designated MOUNT sites, I would think SOAR does this stuff every now and then in real cities. Soo much speculation about a training event. All the conspiracys and Marshall Law stuff online. I assure you life in the military doesn't match the fantasy that civilians make it out to be. It's quite predictable, sometimes boring, and rarely has any sort of hidden agenda or conspiracy. That's what real life is.

[akscott60]

TF has done this sh*t for over a decade.

[Nearly Retired]

If in fact these types of "training exercises" have been going on for "decades," they most certainly have not been happening in the U.S. because this is the first we're hearing about it. Something is different now. High-profile activities like this in big cities...with *zero* notice to the public? And it's all just "business as usual" for our joint military/civilian task force? Yeah. Right. Like I said, the government is sending a message of some sort, especially in this day and age of "terrorist around every corner" paranoia.

[SBuzzkill]

Something is different now. Everyone has an iPhone to film with.

Edited February 3, 2013 by SBuzzkill

[Helipilot PTK]

I will say one thing.

John Noveske, Keith Ratliff, and now Chris Kyle have all died in that past month. two were shot and one died in a mysterious car crash. All of these men were big names supporting the 2nd Amendment. Now this is "fishy". A Ex Navy Seal gets shot along with one other at a shooting range for no reason, I call BS.

[nightsta1ker]

Seriously, you guys are making a huge deal of nothing. The level of training and what happens varies in intensity depending on customer demands, and what the training actually calls for. We would also work closely with local officials and law enforcement. Local civilians were usually not alerted as we didnt want to draw HUGE crowds before the event. Normally we would just go do it, and the next day there would be a story in the local paper about what was going on. As for blank rounds, normally not over an urban area as blanks leave brass as well. I am quite certain none of what you heard was fired from an aircraft in flight. None of those blank rounds sounded like a M240, and the 160th Blackhawks have M134s, not M240s anyways. Those were probably customers on the ground shooing the blank rounds.

[DS_HMMR]

While I'm sure the liberal douchwasie' would prefer we all drive around in eco friendly vehicles that run on hugs and pictures of cute bunnies, the truth is that video like this should do no less than elicit feelings of patriotism. Anyone reported as having anything negative to say about these types of training exercises, should promptly surrender their man-card.