The Big Picture. Department of War (DoW) installations rely on their surrounding communities for electricity, roads, and telecommunications. Disruption to lifeline sectors like electricity can severely impact installation operations, life support infrastructure, and the broader homeland security missions those installations support. 

Why It Matters. March Air Reserve Base (ARB) anchors more than 15,400 jobs and generates $10.1 billion in economic impact across Southern California, including $1.4 billion tied directly to the installation. That economic weight reflects a broader strategic reality: the resilience of the base and the resilience of western Riverside County are intertwined. Increasing natural disasters, aging grid infrastructure, and growing cyber-physical threats make cross-sector coordination essential to protecting both.

Watch March ARB’s summary video of the tabletop exercise below, as featured on DVIDS.

 

About the Exercise. March Inland Port Airport Authority (MIPAA) and March Air Reserve Base (ARB) held a community-installation-utility tabletop exercise funded by the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC), facilitated by Converge Strategies, and hosted by Target Corporation. Installation leadership, local government officials, and utility operators worked through scenarios involving electricity distribution and transmission disruptions and cross-jurisdictional emergency response to offer insights into coordinated approaches for mitigation and recovery. 

What’s Next. The findings from this exercise will serve as a foundation for long-term resilience planning across the installation and the western Riverside County region. Converge Strategies will support stakeholders in translating exercise findings into resilience solutions and build on the common operating picture established during the event.

For more information about the installation-community-utility energy resilience project, explore March ARB’s Press Release on DVIDS and contact: