Devices that replicate Iraq’s roadside bombs are in such
high demand at U.S. military training ranges that the Army recently
doubled its orders for so-called “IED simulators.”
Improvised explosive devices are the number-one killer of American
forces in Iraq, but so far it has been difficult for soldiers and
Marines training for war to rehearse tactics to avoid getting killed
by IEDs.
In an effort to make drills more lifelike, the Army is buying 800
fake IEDs to be used at training facilities in the United States
and Kuwait. The original plan was to acquire 400, but the order
later was upped to 800 to meet the services’ requests.
The Army Program Executive Office for Simulation Training and Instrumentation,
in Orlando, Fla., is purchasing the IED simulators under a $2 million
contract with Unitech Corporation. The company expects to deliver
all 800 devices by March 2006.
Each IED simulator “kit” contains a remote control
that detonates a mock explosive. It doesn’t cause bodily harm
but creates enough noise and smoke clouds to resemble a real IED
event, says Jack Collins, program director at Unitech.
“In the field, they emplace the device, and the insurgent
player has a remote transmitter that they can use to detonate the
IED,” Collins says in an interview. “A safe non-pyrotechnic
simulator releases a large smoke cloud and a great deal of noise,
without the dangerous pyrotechnic blast.”
The mock IED is designed to look like a 155 mm artillery shell.
Two other variants include a pressure-sensitive mine and a tripwire
booby-trap mine, which can be planted under the hood of a vehicle
or inside a building. All devices are powered by a carbon-dioxide
cartridge to help generate noise and smoke clouds.
The military for years has used pyrotechnic devices in training
exercises. Because they are made up of small quantities of C4 plastic
explosive, these pyrotechnics are not only dangerous, but fail to
realistically recreate the large explosions caused by IEDs in Iraq,
Collins explains.
The Unitech simulator was a redesigned version of an earlier device,
made by Raytheon Technical Services Company, of Pomona, Calif. Raytheon
made 125 IED simulators under a $250,000 contract. But the device
got negative reviews from training commanders, who complained that
it was too large, heavy and complicated to operate.
The Army then asked Unitech to design a new version, incorporating
feedback from users. The point of having an IED simulator is to
allow soldiers to think like insurgents and employ creative tactics,
says Collins. “The device is flexible enough that they can
use their own imagination and their own lessons learned from the
theater to replicate what you can do with a real IED.”
These mock IEDs, ironically, often are far more expensive and technologically
complex than the real ones. Once they explode, they have to be reassembled
and prepped to be used again.
“Our engineers commented that it’s much easier to build
a real IED than a training one,” Collins says.
The IEDs that haunt soldiers and Marines in Iraq are, for the most
part, remotely controlled bombs that insurgents build using unexploded
artillery shells and cell phones as detonators. The training devices,
which cost about $2,000 each, are made with commercially available
radio modules, but are more costly because they need to be safe
and rugged enough so they can be reloaded after each explosion.
“It’s easy to detonate an explosive. But it’s
much more difficult to build a training device that is safe and
reusable,” Collins says. “You don’t have those
constraints when all you want to do is blow something up one time.”
The Army, meanwhile, is considering deploying training jammers
that would replicate those used by U.S. troops in Iraq to disable
radio-operated IEDs.
That project has yet to be approved, and no contractor bids have
been awarded yet. Collins says that, even though the jammers deployed
to Iraq are classified systems, it would not be difficult produce
simulators. Company executives were scheduled to brief Army officials
on the proposed technology last month.
“I expect they’ll make a decision soon,” he says.
“It’s a fast-moving requirement to be fielded quickly.”
Unitech also is competing for an upcoming award for training devices
that simulate rocket launchers. Those would be employed by the opposing
“red” forces at training ranches to launch rocket-propelled
grenades and portable anti-tank weapons.
These programs are pieces of a larger effort to turn military training
into a “mission rehearsal” experience that closely resembles
real war, says James T. Blake, program executive officer for simulation,
training and instrumentation. The organization oversees 452 programs
worth $6.7 billion.
Soldiers and Marines are being thrown into a “complex battlefield,”
and their training must reflect that, Blake says in an interview.
For that reason, he says, “We are building villages with IEDs.”
The Army also is spending $32 million on convoy simulators that
digitally recreate the routes that U.S. troops traverse across Iraq.
Two contractors—Lockheed Martin and Raydon—were selected
for this project. “When it was reported that the major threat
in Iraq was against convoys, it took about three to four months
to develop the first combat convoy tactical trainer,” says
Bruce Harris, vice president for training systems at Dynamics Research
Corporation. Programs that traditionally would have taken years
to complete are moving at a rapid pace, says Harris. “I think
this is going to be the trend going forward.”