Photo by Victoria Pickering.

If preparation is the key to success, then area residents might be heartened to hear of a full-scale exercise to get law enforcement ready for a potential coordinated terror attack on the Capitol Complex on Wednesday morning.

Emergency managers with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments are behind Wednesday’s exercise, which will occur in six separate places in Northeast and Southeast D.C., Prince George’s County, Arlington, and Fairfax. The planners are not disclosing more precise locations to maintain the integrity of the exercise, says Jeanne Saddler, a spokesperson for MWCOG.

Hundreds of police, firefighters, and emergency medical service workers will participate. While various departments conduct their own exercises on a smaller scale, this particular drill took about a year of planning, says Saddler.

“Exercises on this large a scale are not that common,” says Saddler. “We want to make sure first responders can communicate and coordinate in a real event.”

The idea is to simulate an attack “involving multiple target locations and teams of perpetrators,” explains MWCOG. To heighten the realism, there’ll be volunteer actors posing as casualties.

That isn’t the only exercise this week to make sure that the region is ready to respond to possible threats. The North American Aerospace Defense Command is conducting “Exercise Falcon Virgo” between midnight and 5:30 a.m. each day through Friday. They’ll be using a Air Force C-21 aircraft, Civil Air Patrol C-182 aircraft, and a U.S. Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin helicopter to “hone NORAD’s intercept and identification operations as well as operationally test the NCR Visual Warning System and training personnel at the Joint Air Defense Operations Center.”

Yes, this is all very reassuring.

Updated with comment from Jeanne Saddler.