An Cosantóir

C 19 | -IED At an exercise in Dublin Port in February, the Ordnance Corps were faced with the unthinkable scenario; that a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN) IED was suspected of being brought into the country in a ship- ping container. Exercise ‘Contained Freedom’ was the two-day tactical phase of an Ordnance Corps CBRN IEDD course. The 30 specialist students have to be trained for every eventu- ality as no two IED situations are the same and on this exercise they were being tested in scenarios that the country, hopefully will never face. This type of exercise is designed to test the Defence Forces’ response to incidents such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 or the ‘white powder’ at- tacks that followed 9/11 in the US. These exercises, which simulate real-time scenarios to demonstrate what students are likely to face on the ground, are conducted annually in different locations around the country. Any real CBRN incident would engender a multi-agen- cy response involving the primary and secondary emer- gency services as well as the local authorities. Therefore, Dublin Fire Brigade’s Chemical Incident Unit, An Garda Síochána, Civil Defence, the Dublin Port Authority and Met Éireann, all participated in Contained Freedom, con- ducting tasks assigned to them under the Major Emer- gency Framework document - a guidance document that outlines the assigned roles for each service during such an emergency. Defence Forces ord- nance specialists used an array of advanced CBRN detection and sampling equipment, personal protective clothing and area- and personal- decontamination equipment. Also at their disposal was the new RG32 Surveillance Target Acquisition LTAV, which provided real time images of the target to the bomb disposal team. To assist them in gaining access to the exercise ‘targets’, they used their two-wheeled Segways buggies and the M-GATOR all-terrain vehicle to transport their equipment about. THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE

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