By
Lou Ann Hammond
"I don’t think I’m the best person
to talk to about Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs),
said Lt. Col. Paul Peirett. Peirett had been in
Iraq in May of 2003, around the same time the IED
bombs started. Peirett went on, "You should
talk to someone who had to deal with it daily, the
insurgency was just growing when I was there. They
still weren’t sure if it was an insurgency
or some rebel element. In terms of my feelings about
it, I learned that there was no telling when or
if you would be selected. It was very random. You
were going down a road and all of a sudden a bomb
could go off in front of you, or behind you. It
brought on a feeling of going from being a hunter
to being hunted. It is quite different; your survival
instincts begin to grow. You are no longer a passive
person walking down a street, or driving down the
street. All of sudden you’re looking at guardrails,
you’re looking for wires, you’re looking
all the time. You’re on edge all the time,
you begin to live like that. I knew from having
been in Bosnia that this was not going to be a ride
in the park. There were people trying to change
our way of lives. There were pockets of people that
thought that if we were going to take away their
way of life, that they were going to take away ours.
My instincts begin to grow, there was a growing
insurgency. When I left Iraq I left with a couple
of MPs who took the doors off their vehicles and
put their shotguns out their windows. I asked them
what they wanted my to do, I only had a nine-millimeter.
They told me to stick the gun out where everyone
could see it. Even the driver had a shotgun propped
in his lap, just so that they knew we were ready
for action if it was needed."
MSgt Bell has been over in Iraq and is going back.
He has seen friends die driving over an IED. He
also knows the feeling of anxiety that Peirett spoke
of. Bell was watching lamp poles, watching, always
watching, always alert. Bell described it as, "Imagine
going into your faucet every morning and turning
your hot water on full blast. One day you go into
the room and turn the faucet on and it explodes
right in your face. How long would it take you before
you didn’t feel anxious about turning the
faucet on again? It was that random and they were
that creative. "
Major General Roger A. Nadeau,Commanding General,
U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering
Command (RDECOM), understands the soldiers anxiety
and spoke to me at the 2005 Association of the United
States Army (AUSA) technology convention in Washington
D.C. General Nadeau takes these issues very seriously,
they are emotional to him as well. These are the
unseen problems that make these young men and women
age quickly. Nadeaus’s group is the voice
of the soldier. They go to him and tell them that
they have to do something. Nadeau’s group
is also looked at as bureaucrats to the soldiers,
because RDECOM has to authorize new technology to
confront new problems. When they go to RDECOM with
these issues Nadeau can’t just tell the soldiers
they are emotional issues. RDECOM has to bridge
the gap between the soldiers and bureaucracy. If
the soldiers aren’t shown a level of confidence
that these issues will be
then they flinch,
they lose trust, and they shouldn’t have to
lose confidence.
The first fix was to bring in mine smelling dogs.
Jim Pettit, Program Manager of the K-9 mine detection
unit came up with the design and development concept
three years ago of sending IED dogs over to sniff
out the bombs. Pettit explains, "Mine detection
dogs were used in World War II in North Africa and
Italy. They were about 4,000 dogs used in Vietnam
performing multiple skills such as scouting, watching
(sentry), mine detectoring and tracking missions.
Today the Army is using mine dogs in Afghanistan
to help clear areas of land mines to keep soldiers
safe in and around base camps. Mine dogs aren’t
used to sniff out IEDs, IED dogs are specially trained
to sniff out components and IEDs. US Army Specialized
Search Dog handler, SSG James Simpson is the first
ever U.S. military handler to work a specialized
search dog.
All the dogs have a rank. It’s not to be cute
and it doesn’t coincide with the rank of the
soldier that handles the dog. US Army Specialized
Search Dog handler, SSG James Simpson, and his three-year
old Black Labrador dog, Staff Sargent Cabor spent
nine months in Iraq hunting for IEDs. Simpson and
Cabor are attached to the Mine Dog Detachment at
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. According to Simpson,
"When we got over to Iraq,the soldiers already
there were very cautious and very aware of their
surroundings. They were taking care of each other
and making sure everyone was ready to go. Everywhere
they went they were making sure that they kept that
level of consciousness up. They were nervous, but
they were confident in what they were doing and
they trusted in what they were doing and what they
were taught."
"We would take the dogs out to the farms and
homes and the dogs could sniff out the IED components
and explosives before the IEDs were even constructed.
Every IED component and explosive we found, meant
we were saving lives." In September, 2005 primatologist
Dr. Jane Goodall recognized Cabor as The Bear Search
and Rescue Foundation Military working dog of the
Year and presented him with an award for service
to humanity.
Back in 1996, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) sponsored a "Dog’s Nose"
program to find technology that could emulate the
mine-sensing capabilities of dogs. Nomadics and
a dozen other companies were funded by Darpa, but
Nomadics was the first company to successfully detect
buried land mines. Nomadics has created a device
that uses a chemical sensing material that was invented
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)that
is able to detect minute amounts of explosive vapors
emanating from buried land mines. The new hand-held
device is called FIDO.
According to Steve Broadway, Vice President of Marketing,
Nomadics, an ICX company, "We have FIDO in
Iraq undergoing demonstration and test. We also
have an integrated system with iRobot’s PacBot
EOD. Three FIDOs/PacBots will go to Iraq for testing
this fall, with more to follow. Testing has shown
us anecdotally that FIDO accuracy for finding IEDs
is comparable to the performance of military working
dogs."
The Army is hoping the technology will help keep
the more lives safer; both soldiers and our canine
friends.
FIDO is attached to the irobot to move over terrains
and detect IEDs |
