New 84th USARRTC course helps Soldiers deal with threat from IEDs

By Chuck Prichard, Triad Contributor

       The streets of Fort McCoy became the roads of Iraq in mid-March as the 84th U.S. Army Reserve Readiness Training Command (84th USARRTC) conducted a new training program designed to help Soldiers avoid roadside bombs during deployment.

A Humvee drives by a simulated IED after the student crew discovered and the neutralized the "bomb" as part of a Counter IED class taught for the first time at Fort McCoy. (Photo by Chuck Prichard)

      "We have all been in training where the instructor has said something like 'What you learn here may some day save your life.' That statement is definitely true for this course," said Chuck Lukasek, chief of the 84th USARRTC's Logistics Training Development Division.

      Sixty-four Army Reserve Soldiers from throughout the world attended the first-ever Counter Improvised Explosive Device (CIED) course. The program was presented as a "train-the-trainer" course in which students are expected to take what they learn back to their respective units and train their comrades.

Sgt. Derek Johnson checks out a dummy artillery round that was taped to the backside of a bridge railing as a training aid for the CIED course. (Photo by Chuck Prichard)

      Lukasek and his team of assistants and instructors put the week-long course together at the request of senior Army leaders who recognized the need to train deploying Soldiers on the dangers of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). While most Army training programs take about two years to develop and implement, Lukasek's crew was able to take the CIED course from conception to the classroom in about four months.

      "We did not have the luxury of time.  Soldiers need this training now," Lukasek said, emphasizing the last word.

      U.S. forces serving in Iraq are finding between 35 and 60 IEDs every day, said Maj. Greg Scheidhauer, IED training officer for U.S. Army Reserve Command (USARC).

      "Unfortunately, many of those detections are through detonation. But when Soldiers use the techniques we are teaching here, they are able to catch many more of the IEDs before they go off. Fewer detonations mean fewer casualties," Scheidhauer said.

      IEDs are not a recent phenomenon in the two-year-old Iraqi operation. The homemade bombs account for about half of the casualties being suffered by coalition troops.

      Senior leaders recognized the IED threat in the early stages of the operation and put together an organization to deal with it. The Joint IED Defeat Task Force was charged with gathering information about how insurgents use the devices and helping commanders develop ways to counteract those efforts.

Two Humvees carrying an IED search team from the Counter IED class approach some debris on the side of the road. As a practical exercise for the course, students were required to apply their IED hunting skills during a drive around Fort McCoy. Using their new skills the students were able to identify a large block of simulated explosives planted in the tire and avoid disaster. (Photo by Chuck Prichard)

      Using military contractors and other resources, the task force was able to quickly implement some training for deploying troops, said Lt. Col. Alan Hartfield, training officer for the task force.

      "But we were only able to reach about 30 to 40 percent of the deploying forces. So to get to the rest of the deploying forces we had to develop a train-the-trainer course," Hartfield said.

      An e-mail seeking help in developing such a course eventually found its way to Lukasek last November.

      He discussed it with other USARRTC experts and they agreed to take on the challenge as long as it did not interfere with the other courses already being taught at the center.

      Since his team was fully tasked with other duties, Lukasek recruited a couple of helpers from other sections of USARRTC and went to work on the CIED course.

      One of the first things he did was attend an IED class being taught to deploying troops by a contractor. "The course was good but it dealt exclusively with what actions (the troops) should take after an IED goes off. Right away, I saw that we needed to make the emphasis on finding them before they detonated," he said.

      Using a search technique the British military developed to deal with bombs in Ireland and Iraqi insurgent information gathered by the task force, Lukasek wrote the program of instruction for the CIED course in record time.

      "The task force had great information. I just had to apply the training principles we use so that the information could be properly conveyed to a student," Lukasek said.

After finishing the draft, Lukasek worked with USARRTC instructors to fine-tune the delivery of the classes.

A student uses binoculars and a radio to help find a solution during one of several practical exercises. (Photo by Capt. Monica Radtke)

      The long hours of rehearsal and rewrites paid off in good reviews from the students who attended this week's course, which was the first of three pilot sessions for the program. Student feedback from the first three sessions will be used to further fine-tune the course before it goes into wide distribution in a few months.

      The students in the first class fell into two distinct categories: those who have been deployed and those who are about to be deployed.

      "I wish I would have gotten this training before I went to Afghanistan," said Sgt. Derek Johnson, an assistant training NCO with 960th Quartermaster Company, an Army Reserve unit located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

      Using the materials provided by the course and his experience of being hit with an IED during his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Johnson is excited about putting on training for his unit that is about to deploy.             

      "They gave us plenty of resources that we can check and update our training so we can go through and teach our troops the current information," said Johnson, who lost part of his knuckle in an IED explosion while deployed.

      "This course is right on target," said Master Sgt. Keith Crabtree, an Army Reserve Soldier with the 451st Civil Affairs Battalion in Pasadena, Texas. A few months ago he returned from a deployment to Iraq that lasted more than a year. An IED hit his three-vehicle convoy as it traveled through the mean streets of Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. "We were lucky. Nobody got hurt," he said.

      As he prepares to return to Iraq on another deployment with his unit, Crabtree will make sure his troops don't have to rely on luck to survive the IED threat.

      "You don't want your troops' first contact with an IED to be in combat. This course gives them realistic, necessary training so they will know what to do," said Crabtree, who will serve as a first sergeant during the upcoming deployment.

      One of the main objectives of the course is to show trainers how to integrate counter IED measures into existing training so that Soldiers are familiar with the concepts when they get deployed, Lukasek said.

      As the course spreads Soldiers will see IED training incorporated into Military Occupational Skill training, Noncommissioned Officer Education System classes and just about every other aspect of common skills training.

      "We want the Soldiers to show up at the mobilization station with some knowledge of IEDs," Lukasek said. "Before we developed this course, they would not hear anything about IEDs until they got to the mobilization station. That's too late in the game."

      The CIED course is a perfect example of the kind of programs that are needed to support the Army Reserve's new training concept of "Train, Alert, Deploy," said Col. Phil Tullar, USARRTC Chief of Staff.

      "Our Army is going from an old post-Cold War model where we had many, many months to build up and mass over time to a new paradigm where we may have to send Army Reserve Soldiers in harm's way on a moment's notice . Courses like this give them not only the training they need but the mindset to get past the old attitude of 'I am a combat support or combat service support Soldier and I am safe here behind the front lines,'" Tullar said.

      For more information about 84th USAARTC courses, visit the Web site https://arrtc.mccoy.army.mil.

(Editor's Note: Prichard is a Public Affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Reserve Command Public Affairs Office. )