Fort Dix Terror Plot

I live here in New Jersey. Currently I live close enough to the World Trade Centers to see the smoke in the aftermath.

But most of my life I lived in Howell, New Jersey and for a number of years I was a member of the New Jersey Air National Guard ad McGuire AFB.

I knew Big Blue when it was Big Blue and not what it is today, Big Beige. I was around to know the guys and talk to them about a certain club on base that used to be a stripper club.

So, headlines about a proposed attack on Fort Dix which shares boundaries with McGuire AFB certainly brings in my attention.

I've seen some pictures lately of the base in a lot of the articles and I'm happy to note that Fort Dix is now a closed base. When I was over there the Air Force Base was a closed base (meaning it had guarded gates) and Fort Dix was wide open. I even remember getting kind of lost leaving from a drill weekend and wandering around in Fort Dix.

Perhaps it is a result of 9/11 that the army bases are closed bases now, but it is a good thing in general for security. In a world with so many people in it, and a country like the USA with a large population as well, it would be difficult to imagine that there aren't people who don't wish us all well.

How we react to that fact will determine what kind of people we are.

Even with the newer gates on Fort Dix, I find that the gates themselves are targets. People commute in to the bases on daily basis. The gates themselves in these circumstances have a lot of people at them (in cars waiting to get in plus the soldiers running the gate).

It would be foolish to think that the gate itself wouldn't be a target. Our roads in the US are designed to be long and straight where a suicide bomber in a large truck could build up momentum. So, I think that a general (not a frantic and scared) review of the entrances of the military bases and their defensibility from suicide attacks should be in order.

Some recommendations would be:
1) More gates or gates that allow more cars to pass through at a time (meaning we'd have to have more people to man the gates to certify vehicles as they go through the gates as well).
2) No straight roads moving in to the bases.
3) Speed bumps of significant size to impede high speed vehicles.
4) Watch towers manned or unmanned and remotely controlled with weaponry.

There was a base in Germany that I heard about (a US base) in which the gate was armed with a system that would push the cement (and the car on it) up and away from the gate if someone attempted a breach.

Now, that would be neat. It was unfortunately, in the story told to me, used on a normal person coming through the gate. The guard asked for ID and didn't see it, even though it was offered (which can happen) and got nervous and fired the mechanism.

I wasn't told of anyone being hurt. But it does show that every day use of a gate needs to be weighed against over-the-top security.

Anyway, I'm glad these guys were caught and that no-one was hurt.