The U.S. military carried out another training operation in the City of Industry on Friday morning, following similar drills in several other cities in Los Angeles County earlier this week.
“It was just really loud. Rattled our door. Our windows were shaking,” resident Cathy Palacios said.Â
Helicopters and troops descending upon the Puente Hills Mall rattled Palacios and her daughter, who live a block away from the shopping center.Â
“All we hear is boom, boom, boom. It was startling,” Palacios said. “We had no notice of it. Not a little note on the door, mail, nothing.”
Similar to the earlier training operations in Long Beach, Pasadena and Pomona, the military has not provided much information about the exercises.Â
Retired U.S Marine Corps Lt. Col. Hal Kempfer, who is also a former intelligence officer, said the helicopters in the operations belong to the U.S. Army.Â
“The Blackhawks, MH-60s, have aero-refueling probes in the front,” he said. “That’s very distinctive. That’s only with certain units. That’s something that you’d often see with what’s called the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.”
The 160th, also known as the “Night Stalkers,” were part of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden and the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Kempfer believes the recent drills may be a joint operation with other branches of the military.Â
“Believe me, if the army is doing military operations in urban terrain, in the Los Angeles area, in and around residential areas, that tells me that it’s pretty high profile,” Kempfer said.Â
He added that training off base happens more often than many realize.Â
“If you’re looking at a potential mission, anywhere in the world, where you have to go into a densely populated area and land in a confined space, and clear buildings, multiple stories, you can only simulate that so much on a military base,” Kempfer said.Â
