An Cosantóir the official magazine of the Irish Defence Forces and Reserve Defence Forces.
Issue link: https://digital.jmpublishing.ie/i/81237
ground sign awareness | 15 BY WESLEY BOURKE PHOTOS BY CPL NOEL COSS AND PENCARI LTD T tive. Ground-sign awareness teaches people how to read signs, not too dissimilar to what you would see a tracker doing in the old Westerns. A sign can be defined as any C-IED/IED disposal teams it is every soldier's responsibility to be aware of their environment. Combating IEDs requires a holistic approach and includes everything from attacking the IED network at the top level all the way down to the individual soldier's eyes and ears. Sometimes the simplest training can be the most effec- overseas. In July three French soldiers serving with UNIFIL in Lebanon were wounded by a roadside bomb near Saida, and in December five French soldiers and two civilians were wounded by a powerful roadside bomb in Tyre. Both attacks deliberately targeted UNIFIL personnel. It is no surprise therefore that counter-IED training has taken on increasing significance. While counter-IED tasks fall mainly to specially trained he threat posed by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) is ever present, both at home (last year EOD personnel received 280 callouts in Ireland) and ground-sign awareness training is being made available to all EU member states. Jim Blackburn, the EDA Project Of- ficer for C-IED, says: "The EDA takes the train-the-trainer ap- proach. The new instructors can then train their own per- sonnel. It's about enabling capabilities across the Union." Pencari, specialists in the field, have been contracted by change to the natural environment made by a human, animal, or machine: a boot print or Mars bar wrapper, for example. Ground-sign awareness training for troops serv- ing in Afghanistan with ISAF is estimated to have improved the soldiers' capability of recognising an IED by up to 80%. As part of a European Defence Agency (EDA) programme the EDA to train the trainers. "What do you see in front of you? Is there anything that doesn't look like it belongs there?" These words were spoken to students by Dean Williams, a director with Pencari, on a ground-sign aware- ness course conducted in the Curragh. Looking over a small grassy area I didn't notice anything at first. But when you are asked to describe what you see it starts to hit home: cigarette butts in one area…trampled grass in another…a www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE