An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir November 2016 www.dfmagazine.ie 26 | ESSCEngineerExercise By SGT WAYNE FITZGERALD PhoToS By SGT MICK BuRKE T he autumn Engineer Specialist Search & Clearance (ESSC) exercise took place from 26th-30th September in the areas of Gorman- ston Camp and Dundalk. This was the seventeenth such exercise over the last eight years and involved ESSC teams from all brigades. During the exercise a briefing was given to members of the general staff, senior military personnel and per- sonnel from the Dept of Foreign Affairs and An Garda Síochána at Gormanston Camp. In his introduction to the briefing, Director of En- gineering, Col Jim Burke, broke the ESSC teams' tasks into offensive, defensive, and incident operations, and on-island or off-island (overseas) scenarios. He said at present the Defence Forces could deploy up to eight ESSC teams, two in each Brigade, one in the DFTC, one in UNDOF, one formed up for deployment to UNIFIL and one training for deployment to UNDOF. Col Burke said: "We learn a lot from these exercises. They provide different challenges in very different scenar- ios, enabling us to benchmark our doctrine, training and equipment and to develop our tactics and procedures." The Exercise Director Lt Col Kevin Higgins and As- sistant Exercise Director Comdt Robert Downey then briefed on the five exercise tasks, two of which were similar to recent real events: a garda request to search an isolated area of bogland in Kerry for a man who had disappeared in 1991, and an incident in UNIFIL where a Spanish armoured vehicle had reversed over an old anti-tank mine. Our hosts then brought us to visit all the exercise areas except for Dundalk Racecourse, where Comdt Downey told us that a successful offensive search had been carried out the previous day. SCenario 1 (GorManSTon area) On arrival we met the 1 Bde Engr Gp ESSCO (Engineer Specialist Search and Clearance Officer), Capt Fergus Twomey, who said his team was conducting a humanitarian demining operation, based on UNIFIL experiences. While the search area was only 50m x 50m we were told this would normally take around three days to clear and if a find was made this could stretch out to three months. Capt Twomey showed us the €400,000 Mine- wolf mine-clearance machine that was being used to flail the area in order to detonate and disrupt buried mines. The Mine- wolf has many other uses, and its robotic arm and other add-ons were on show. The other mine clearance vehicle employed on the site was the Croatian-made Doking Mk4, which has been upgraded in Ireland with specialist camera equipment to allow it to be also used as a robust recce vehicle. "After the mechanical clearance is completed," Capt Twomey told us, "the ESSC team move in and conduct a detailed manual search in 10m x 10m areas, wearing level-1 protection and searching for mainly-plastic, low-metal-content mines." SCenario 2 (GorManSTon CaMP) Capt Donal McCann, Engr Platoon Commander, 109 Inf Bn, UNIFIL, told us about this scenario, where a vehicle had accidentally crossed into a minefield, detonating a mine and suffering two casualties. This was based on an incident that happened on 14th September 2016, where a Spanish UNIFIL vehicle drove over a Tm46 anti-tank mine. Fortunately there were no fatalities, due to the design of the Iveco vehicle whose doors automatically open to release the pressure inside after an explosion. "The reason it was described as a 'mine incident' and not a 'mine

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