Christmas Bells (Well, Rockets and Mortars) Will Be ‘Ringing’ All Month at Joint Base

Troops at Joint Base MDL train. (Photo: Joint Base MDL)

There’s a good chance you’ll hear some loud booms coming from the west this month – but there’s nothing to worry about. Most local residents call it the “Sound of Freedom.”

Servicemembers at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst will be spending their holiday season with an intensive training schedule, ranging from small arms, to rocket fire, to cratering charges. The first portion of the marathon training period came earlier this week, when a U.S. Air Force medical group conducted an operation to simulate a response to a CBRE attack – an acronym that stands for “chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive.”

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The base released a schedule of its expected training exercises this week. It appears in graphical form below. Today, the base will host rotary wing artillery gunnery training, with .50 caliber rifles, rocket fire and rotary cannons. That same training, which produces “moderate” noise, will be held Dec. 5-11 and Dec. 13-17.

On Friday, the training will move to heavier weapons, including the live-firing of mortars, howitzer batteries and cratering charges. The heavy training will run Friday and Saturday this week.

Small arms training will be held Dec. 12, then from Dec. 18-31. This training generally encompasses rifles, sidearms and specialized small arms.

The full schedule appears below:

JBMDL Schedule