An Cosantóir

young guns | 17 Vox Pops Lt David Marquezy Torres, Instructor, Belgium Engineer School "I'm a specialist search team instructor in Belgium. Our job is to go back and teach these skills to our personnel. We did not have ground-sign awareness training before so this will be one more tool in our TTPs (Train- ing Tactics Procedures)." Lt Cornelius Ragin, German Centre for Counter-IED used to attack the network by specially trained teams. "When a device is found, the IEDD team moves in, makes the IED safe and exploits the scene," Dean continued. "Personnel with advanced ground-sign awareness and combat tracking training analyse the signs left behind and build up a picture of the individuals involved." Dean outlined an incident that took Ground-sign awareness is also being "The Counter-IED Centre is constantly looking at ways to enhance the de- fence capabilities of our personnel. We do not have ground-sign aware- ness in Germany so I think it is a very good additional asset." Sgt Ann-Marie Larkin, C-IED Cell 106 Inf Bn "Every unit travelling overseas now has a C-IED Cell. Ground-sign aware- sures, ground-sign awareness training is set to become part of the Defence Forces' C-IED syllabus. This is the norm in most modern armies and in some countries all military personnel are trained and tested annually. place in Afghanistan where evidence helped put an IED maker behind bars. "The same signs, specifically three sets of footprints, were found at the scene of a series of IEDs. Studying the footprints it was found that two were made by san- dals of the type worn by locals but the other was made by runners, which are not worn by villagers in Afghanistan. It also looked as if the person wearing the runners was standing in an instructing position. Cigarette butts from a Pakistani brand were also found at each site. Along with other evidence gathered, combat trackers were able to build a profile and through this a Pakistani IED instructor was eventually caught." Due to the importance of C-IED mea- ness is going to become standard for all troops travelling overseas. Train- ing for 106 Inf Bn has finished but we can do further training in Leba- non and put in place what is required for the next unit. I did the C-IED instructors course last year and we would recommend that ground-sign awareness becomes part of that course. This was very different from last year's C-IED course. Last year we were physically searching for the device whereas this time we were able to stand back and locate the device using ground-sign awareness." L/Cpl Carvalho de Matos, British Army 33 Fd Eng Regt "I am a team commander with a Royal Engineer search team and I did a tour in Afghanistan with a specialist search and clearance team in 2010/2011. A lot of the time we were route-clearing for the infantry. Although we had basic ground-sign awareness training, this course has taught us is that with more advanced training more lives can be saved. Basic ground-sign awareness has become part of the British Army's Military Annual Training Tests (MATTs). When we go back to our unit we will be incorpo- rating this training into our unit." www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE

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