St Louis City residents have been warned to not be alarmed at the sight of U.S. Army tanks rolling down residential neighborhoods after sightings of the vehicles provoked fears of martial law.

 

The exercise is part of a U.S. Army program run by military police from Fort Meade, Maryland focused around training MPs from St. Louis how to drive heavily armored tanks “on highways and on city streets.”

Sightings of the tanks prompted hundreds of residents to flood news channel KSDK’s Facebook page, with some expressing fears that martial law had arrived with others promising to “stop and salute” the tanks as they rolled by.

Reporting that he was told by the Army not to disclose the location of where the exercise was operating out of for “security reasons,” KSDK reporter Casey Nolan downplayed the exercise as “not such a big deal.”