Communication as a non-lethal weapon

“You want to use whatever you can before you take a human life.”
Mike Collabollette, Army Center of Excellence, National Training Center, Fort Irwin

FORT IRWIN — The classroom door stood ajar, and from it poured fragments of Arabic chatter. But inside, the students were not Arab, nor were they practicing Arabic phrases in a traditional language class.

The students were soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division from Schofield, Hawaii, learning to use the latest translation tools at Fort Irwin before they deploy to Iraq. Pat Padilla, a Rapid Equipping Force trainer at with the Army’s Center of Excellence at National Training Center, Fort Irwin, said providing soldiers with tools to help them better communicate with the local Iraqis can save both soldier and civilian lives.

“The soldiers are safe, and the civilians are safe,” Padilla said about using communication tools instead of a weapon.

He said during the earlier stages of the war, confrontations at security checkpoints throughout Iraq turned violent because Iraqis and Americans miscommunicated. The Army has since employed devices to bridge the communication gap.

During Padilla’s class, soldiers learn how to use communication tools to better interact with Iraqis. The tools are as primitive as street stop signs in both English and Arabic and as advanced as small electronic translators with up to 3,000 preprogrammed Arabic phrases accessible through the push of a button. Two soldiers, Pvt. Pablo Guardo and Spc. Joshua Stone, sat in the back of classroom making the small device say Arabic phrases over and over.

“Everything from ‘Show me your ID’ to ‘Do you need a doctor?’ ” Padilla said.

After many hours of classroom training on the tools, the soldiers take their knowledge into the field to try it out. The center has a mock security checkpoint set up on its grounds, and soldiers practice stopping and communicating with Iraqis who assist with Fort Irwin’s training. Mike Collabollette, a civilian employee at the Army Center of Excellence, said soldiers sometimes forget their classroom instruction from the time they leave Fort Irwin to their deployment.

The simulation training, he said, stays with them much longer.

One translation device translates in a matter of seconds a soldier’s English command into Arabic. The soldier speaks English into a microphone and an Arabic equivalent phrase booms from a speaker. The speaker on another device produces sound so loud it can be heard up to 500 meters away. Soldiers can speak into a microphone or pre-recorded mp3s with commands telling Iraqis that they are approaching a checkpoint.

The soldiers also learn how to use signaling devices, such as lasers, to catch the attention of incoming Iraqis from a distance.

The soldiers will take some of the equipment they trained with into the Box for further training at the end of the week. Once in Iraq, many soldiers will get versions of the equipment there.

Before the Box

This three-part series examines some of the specialized training soldiers receive at the National Training Center before stepping into the simulated war zone in Fort Irwin’s desert known as the Box.

For some soldiers, the Army Center of Excellence is their first stop for instruction at the National Training Center. A week before a brigade heads into the fake Iraqi towns that make up Fort Irwin’s training environment, about 2,000 soldiers receive specialized training in improvised explosive devices, robotics, searching houses and other aspects of warfighting.

Thursday: Communication as a non-lethal weapon
Friday: Blocking radio-controlled IEDs
Saturday: Search, but do not destroy

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4121 or aaron_aupperlee@link.freedom.com