Situational Awareness Alert

[Stonewall]

The attack in London earlier this week, if confirmed to be a terrorist attack, illustrates how military infrastructure and personnel continue to be attractive targets for terrorists around the world.

In the UK in 2007, authorities foiled a plot by a group of terrorists to behead a member of the British armed forces. Here in the US, in June 2009 Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a.k.a. Carlos Bledsoe, killed one soldier and wounded another outside a recruiting station in Little Rock, AR. In November of the same year, Maj. Nidal Hassan opened fire at Ft. Hood, killing 13 and wounding more than 30. Then, in New York, a bomb was set off outside a military recruiting center in Times Square in March of 2008 and in 2011 Jose Pimentel was arrested for plotting to target U.S. Armed Forces personnel returning from overseas deployments. Something that affected my unit specifically, was the shooting of USAF Security Forces members on a bus in Germany as they were en route to Afghanistan in 2011, to the very location we were deployed to.  Had this not happened (2 were killed), the very people on that bus would have been working directly for me.

Don't assume that because you don't hold a high clearance, are in the RealMilitary®, or don't consider yourself a major cog in the military machine, that you will be excluded as a target. Stay alert - stay alive. The bad guys only have to get it right once; we have to get it right every time.

[Paul_AK]

 :clap: Outstanding post, sir.

The past couple years have shown that everyone has a need to sty vigilant. From Firefighters getting shot up on scene, to the incidents highlighted in your post. I flew through Frankfurt the day after the bus incident while PCSing. It was tense to say the least, Polizei definitely had things locked down tight, though.