Outside the Wire

It has been a while since I have written. Sorry about that. The time has flown by and the longer I stay here the more the daily tempo of activity seems to increase. My routine duties, if you call anything around here routine, took a backseat about a week and a half ago. TF Troy was requested to provide support for a rapidly identified, high priority mission west of Baghdad and the J8 was directed to support the identified mission needs. Accordingly, with the robust size of TF Troy J8 at 3, two Majors and “moi”, I had the opportunity to personally support the subject mission.

While many of the details of the mission cannot be discussed or outlined in this forum, I will try and give you an overview of some of my generic experiences and insights. It was totally different than providing support in and around Victory Base Camp. Going “outside the wire” presented its own set of expectations and challenges. I do want to emphasize that under the leadership of the J8, Major(s) Stamm and Holifield, neither they nor I, would support a non-trained war fighter to venture outside the wire for a casual purpose. The mission was very specific, very well defined, and my involvement was as a participant, not as a reporter or observer. MAJ Holifield (PhD) the Uniformed Army Scientist that works within the TF Troy J8, led our support for this mission and provided me explicit guidance and direction when required. Such instances included (but were not limited to) logistics involving helicopter transport from Victory Base Camp to the Forward Operating Base and Force Protection TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) when riding in a convoy or when dismounted & executing the mission. So, while vastly different from Victory Base Camp, my best interests were planned for and well executed by my war fighting colleagues.

The mission and experience was unpredictable, productive, crazy exciting and at times very frustrating. As I stated, I can not go into details on what we did or where we were but I will try and give you a sense of the experience. While I didn’t expect to provide support in this manner, in hindsight it was a very fulfilling and interesting opportunity. We accomplished our mission objectives and goals with no unanticipated events or results. I really feel I was in the right place, at the right time to have been able to be a part of such an event. Now I’ll transition to a more explicit description of the details of the mission-accordingly, the one word that comes to mind is dirt.

There was dirt everywhere. On Thursday when we went “outside the wire” at the FOB, the winds were blowing 35-40 knots. At times, the sandstorm was so bad that visibility was limited to less than 50 feet. We had one day to accomplish the task so we stayed out, got dirty and completed the mission. We were either in mission prep or outside the FOB conducting the mission for over 10 hours. After the mission, MAJ Holifield recommended we take a picture to have a record of the dirt collected on us, and it is shown below. There was sand and dirt everywhere. I’m using the words sand and dirt interchangeably because the substance has the consistency of very, very fine dirt-almost chalk-like but you’re in the desert so people think of sand. For the first time during my deployment, I worked extensively with Marines. They are very polite but very straightforward, they are very casual in their demeanor regarding what needs to get done but very professional when planning and executing, and they have fun. There is the non-stop ribbing, joking and poking at each other while they do what they need to do. I feel similarly about my experience working alongside them as I do with their US Army counterparts – after working with them, taking into account their average size and capabilities, one decides very quickly that it is a good thing they are on YOUR side. Or better yet, you are on THEIR side.

The convoy out of the FOB was another exciting experience. When we drove from the base it felt like we drove for 5 miles before I saw any evidence of life. No dogs or cats, no running power lines – only the poles where lines were once attached – old tires and rims, light poles fallen on the ground, thousands of torn plastic bags, and general trash you would find at a dump (but no food trash, just junk). When we finally got to the edge of a village or house, it was littered with the same amount of trash, everywhere. Most of the buildings didn’t have roofs (they weren’t bombed or anything, they just weren’t completed structures), and the ones that did have a roof often times had a generator in the front yard with an extension cord running from it into the house. I didn’t see any lights on while we passed. It was around 0800 so it was daylight and I was traveling in the back of a 7 ton “personnel carrying” covered truck so visibility from my vantage point wasn’t the best. A picture of the 7-ton truck is shown below with two HMMWV’s. We were part of an 8 vehicle convoy and our truck was approximately in the middle. As we progressed along the route people, mostly children, lined the road. The children were jumping up and down, waving, and shouting something as the trucks passed. I asked after we arrived at the site what they were shouting, and I was told they were hollering for chocolate. The Marines often throw out candy to the children.

The transport to and from the VBC and FOB was interesting and frustrating, again very characteristic of a wartime environment. We traveled via helo both ways, both times flights were either canceled, delayed or both. I really felt fortunate to get to the FOB and back at VBC when we did. Both ways, going out or returning, I thought we were going to stay at the locale another night.

I guess I’ll sign off. But before I do, I wanted to highlight the details of another fallen hero who died in support of our country and OIF. Please remember, routinely, just like we all see in the daily editions of USA Today, our soldiers are paying the ultimate price for the freedom we enjoy in our everyday life. So in every effort, those engaged in moving technology from the laboratory to the war fighter need to feel a sense of urgency and a sense of personal purpose. Tech. Sgt. Anthony L. Capra, 31, of Hanford, Calif., died Wednesday, 9 April 2008 near an area called Golden Hills, about 6 miles west of Balad Air Base, of wounds sustained when he encountered an improvised explosive device.

He was an explosive ordnance technician and assigned to Detachment 63 of the 688th Armament Systems Squadron in Indian Head, Md. Before he was stationed at Indian Head, Capra was assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and the 96th Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Flight. “It’s a huge hit to the Eglin EOD flight because we knew Tony personally,” Capt Shane Frith, EOD flight commander, said in an Air Force statement. “We won’t be able to forget his character and the way he represented the EOD community. The impact is tremendous on the local troops here.” In May 2006, Capra was among seven airmen from the flight presented Bronze Stars for their service in Iraq. Capra was assigned to the 688th in the fall of 2007. The squadron oversees the acquisition of bomb disposal gear and other combat support equipment for the Air Force. Capra’s other decorations include the Air Force Commendation Medal presented in 2006 and Air Force Achievement Medal presented in May 2002.

VT Tribute

Still keeping cool…

Another week has passed and life in Baghdad continues. The dirt keeps blowing, the temperatures have been very comfortable, and the soldiers keep going outside the wire keeping ground-level lanes of communication clear for military and commercial traffic alike. EOD teams continue to respond to tasking (i.e. in the hundreds per week) from route clearance to IED’s discovered by civilians in homes and/or businesses. Rocket attacks here at Victory Base Camp and in downtown Baghdad (i.e. in the IZ or Green Zone) have stepped up in concert with the overall rise in insurgent activity in the area and in Basra.

When the pace picks up like we have experienced over the last week or two, I see one constant and that is the “focus” of all here, i.e. the ones supporting the forces, back at base camp. Whether we are talking about Motor Pool maintenance support, administration support (i.e. the J1 shop) or the Rapid Equipment Force, (i.e. a rapid prototyping shop) all “step up” and meet the challenge. For us in the J8, Science and Technology, this increase in operations tempo typically means our testing of prototypical equipment is affected due to personnel training needs.  We have an increased awareness of efforts to survey the S&T arena for emerging new technologies or techniques to address the evolving high priority threat, and we augment training of EOD personnel when new equipment is introduced into the field. I will very briefly highlight a few of the importance aspects the J8 places on introduction of new equipment into the Iraqi Theater of Operations (ITO) for the Counter-Improved Explosive Device (C-IED).

As I have tried to highlight in previous entries, many urgent operational needs are identified and validated by the DoD chain of command in support of the fight against the insurgent/terrorist IED. I have tried to document the local, in theater process that feeds the mainstream technology development and acquisition processes. Since the onset of the war, March 2003, there have been mission needs and capability gaps that need addressing.  Also, frequently there are technologies that need maturation to meet specific needs.  Over the last 2-3 years in rapidly fielding equipment to meet these needs, “lessons learned” have provided the insight that a couple of system metrics are paramount. Their importance is such that we cannot field equipment if we do not have assessment data to characterize these parameters. The high priority four are; reliability, availability, maintainability and interoperability. While this list isn’t comprehensive, it is a focus of selected suitability aspects of any new technology or equipment that most be characterized prior to introducing equipment into the field. Capabilities and Limitations need to be understood by the war fighter prior to introducing the equipment into the field. This premise is not in the same perspective as establishing thresholds and objectives the way we do for traditional ACAT programs. If the war fighter understands that the reliability of the UAV is 50% in an extreme environment, they can derive Tactics, Techniques and Procedures to apply this system solution to the operational problem if the associated performance parameters warrant. However, if we understand the system has the capability to fly high & far, observe areas of interest, and communicate the details back to the area commander, but we do not have a good grasp of the system’s reliability, availability and/or interoperability, then its value as an operational asset is suspect. Accordingly, operational risk is high. The operative word here is “understand”.  There needs to be a consensus between the rear component and the forward war fighters as to what adequate validation of these key metrics are with respect to evaluation environment, number of trials, and pedigree of configuration.

That’s the latest word from Baghdad.  Hopefully there was some insight here, if not a focus on a new paradigm for some maybe just a re-emphasis of the obvious for others. Before I depart I will include a picture or two of the world over here, for your interest.

Me next to a Cougar-MRAP

The Wire at Night

Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith

Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith died in Iraq while doing his job — disarming bombs. At a ceremony last year at the military installation, friends and loved ones of the Pennsylvania native remembered him as an affable fix-it man who didn’t shirk from dangerous tasks. Picatinny Arsenal has honored Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith by placing his name on the military building here where he used to work. “He saved lives and did things most of us couldn’t imagine,” said Smith’s widow, 27-year-old Gari-Lynn Smith. Master Sgt. Gregory T. Miller, who worked with Smith as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist, remembered his friend by his nickname — “Smitty.” “He was happy, he never let things get him down,” Miller said of the 34-year-old Punxsutawney, Pa., man.

Smith worked as a mechanic before joining the Army in the early 1990s, becoming a military policeman. Responding to bomb threats got him interested in disarming explosives. At Picatinny, Smith worked at the building now named after him, where he and his colleagues helped train bomb recognition and disposal to other soldiers. Smith was also involved in developing and testing robots designed to detect bombs. Smith was based at Picatinny from 2000 until February 2006, when he was deployed to Iraq. He died on July 17, 2006, while attempting to defuse an improvised explosive device when another exploded nearby, according to the Army.