Things are assuredly different now since I retired 27 years ago, but with titles like "community commander", "post commander" and positions of responsibility along those lines, the US Army has not hesitated to group dependents, civilians, and others not in uniform under the umbrella of "community".
This means that, in the commander's eye, a perceived (but wholly untrue) threat to public health results in the kind of shit you're seeing, Snugs. These peeps are given broad latitude to do what they believe they need to do, but let's not lay all that directly on the commander -- given the shitbird that runs the Pentagon these days, Lloyd Austin, he and his sycophants may have issued an edict to all local commanders to do exactly this -- all in the guise of "protecting the public health."
