An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir May 2018 www.dfmagazine.ie 16 | ARtICLE AnD PhotoS By CPL LEE CoyLE T he Engineer Corps recently conducted an Engineer Specialist Search and Clearance (ESSC) exercise to put the DF ESSC teams to the test and it also gave them a chance to showcase some new equipment. the exercise, codenamed ESSCEX-20, took place in various locations across Dublin City and involved ESSC teams from each of the Brigades, it also included the ESSC team from the 112 Inf Bn, unIFIL, who are currently formed up and will be departing for Lebanon at the start of May. The Teams were deployed in a variety of Offensive and De- fensive search operations, that covered field area Searches, a ship search, a train carriage search, and building searches. The locations for these included Croke Park, Phoenix Park, a P&O Car Ferry, an unmanned train station in Dublin, and a disused factory. The ESSC Team from the 112 Inf Bn, were tasked with searches that incorporated an overseas scenario, in keeping with their upcoming deployment. Some of the operations were designed to be linked together to give a wider picture of the situation and a more realistic sce- nario. The search of the ship at the P&O car ferry, was linked to the search at the disused factory. In the P&O car ferry scenario, suspected terrorists had entered Ireland by the ferry, and had left a suspected vehicle that was believed to be wired with explosives on board. Continuing on from this, they were then believed to have set up a safe-house within the Dublin area. We joined one of the ESSC teams, as they were put through their paces at the disused factory, the factory itself was the old Odlum's Factory at Dublin Port. The area the factory covered was heavily built up, with tall industrial buildings and offices rising high into the air. The building that would be the focus of their search was an office block that use to house the Odlum's Company offices. When we arrived at the location, the area had been sealed off and a methodical approach for dealing with the search of the building was being put into place. Entry control points were marked out and safe areas leading to and from the building were cordoned off by tape. The ESSC Team had also set up a control centre from which they would work from. Their mission which was up on a board in the control room read 'conduct an offensive on the unoccupied building by searching the Odlum's offices to clear the suspect terrorist safehouse.' We spoke to the ESSC Team Officer about the location, they told us, 'This is a high-risk Op as the building is unoccu- pied, so we will be expecting it to be boobytrapped.' they also added how they were lead to this building, 'In the scenario, we were led to this building by the Garda Sío- chána, who had received a tip off and they also had forensic evidence from an individual in DJ1 Matrice 210 coMMercial Drone the DF has purchaseD Four oF these unManneD arial systeMs. DIMEnSIonS unFoLDED: 716MM x 880MM x 408MM WEIght: APPROx. 4.42KG MAX tAKE-oFF WEIght: APPROx. 6.14KG FLyIng tIME: 30-40 MINS MuLtIPLE CAMERAS: THERMAL IMAGING, ZENMUSE Z30, FIRST PERSON VIEW CAMERA oPERAtIng SyStEM: DJI GO 4 AUTONOMOUS CAPABILITIES OPTION TO MOUNT OTHER CAMERAS OR PAyLOADS

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