In the box, part I: Their weapon of choice

Soldiers from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, a Fort Irwin-based Operations group, and Iraqi-Americans replicate the Iraqi environment in towns scattered across the desert at the post. They have created a provincial government, a police force and insurgents who try to blow it all up.

During a rotation in mid-October, the 11th ACR got a chance to train against themselves. Desert Dispatch City Editor Aaron Aupperlee embedded with Echo Troop from the 1st Squadron of the 11th ACR to see the training first-hand.

This is the first of three reports.

FORT IRWIN — Perched up against a rock, Sgt. Nino Gray holds his M4 carbine across his chest and scans the roadway cutting through the desert valley below. A plethora of stars and an almost full moon shroud the barren desert landscape below in a dull gray hue.

In the distance, a line of lights slowly emerges through the mountains. The line grows longer, snaking along the road that connects Gray’s regiment’s base to the wild desert where insurgents and terrorists plot and place improvised explosive devices. The lights move toward the base; Gray radios down to a platoon of humvees waiting at the foot of the mountains.

“It’s the engineers,” a voice crackles back over the radio.

Gray sighs. Even though it is only training — Gray and the rest of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment are not back in the desert of Iraq but home in the desert of Fort Irwin — he is relieved to see the 14th Combat Engineer Battalion combing the roads, looking for improvised explosive devices, conventionally abberviated IEDs.

“I guess I put my life in their hands,” Gray said. “They say, ‘Better them doing it than me.’”

A good portion of the training that occurs at the National Training Center focuses on countering the threat posed by IEDs, and with good reasons. The Associated Press reported between 60 and 70 percent of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq are because of IEDs. Col. Mark Calvert, the commander of the 11th ACR, whose mission is in part to train soldiers bound for the battlefield of Iraq in dealing with the IED threat, said he strives to make IEDs a part of any mission.

“Fort Irwin has become sort of a hub of IED defeat training,” Calvert said. “The main weapon used by the enemy happens to be an IED.”

Sgt. Thomas Marrs deployed for his second tour of duty in Iraq with the 11th ACR in February 2005. When he deployed the first time, in 2003, he said the fight was mostly gun-to-gun. However, in 2005, his unit was rocked by IED attacks; one right after another, about 411 times, he said.

“We expected to get hit every time we went out,” he said. “And sometimes we did.”

Clearing the routes prone to IEDs is the job of the engineers. They comb the roads most often used by coalition forces and Iraqi civilians and look for IEDs. When they find them, the engineers try to disable them and gleam intelligence about who made them, where they came from and how they work. Barry Wood, a sergeant with the 14th engineers, called the battalion IED triggermen.

“We just drive up and down the roads looking for IEDs,” he said. “And for the most part, we just blow them up.”

Training with the 11th ACR in preparation for the deployment in the spring of 2008, the 14th engineers brought the latest vehicle development in the fight against IEDs, known as the Buffalo. The Buffalo has a long robotic arm and claw that can dig an IED from the ground. A camera mounted on the end of the claw investigates the device keeping U.S. soldiers a safe distance away. Most impressive is the Buffalo’s armor, capable of withstanding a direct hit from a 155 mm round, Wood said.

A standard armored Army humvee cannot take hits. During a morning raid by soldiers from Echo Troop, caches full of IED supplies —initiators, fuse cord and 155 mm rounds — were found. Platoon leader 2nd Lt. William Borath said even one round could spell disaster for a passing convoy.

“Every single one of these can destroy a humvee,” Borath said, pointing a row of 155 rounds sitting on ground.

The mission that morning was to deprive the enemy of the means to assemble IEDs along the roadways. In the training environment at Fort Irwin, the soldiers playing the insurgents and opposing forces take cues from what the Iraqis use to make the IED threat more real. If an IED explodes in Iraq, experts at Fort Irwin can replicate the device in about 72 hours. Fort Irwin uses the IEDs that soldiers see in Iraq, devices ranging in sophistication from the classic wire and plunger construction to explosives detonated by pressure plates, garage door openers and cell phones and duplicate the networks that finance, built and place the deadly weapons.

“Our IED kits are built just like the Iraqi ones,” Marrs said. “The IED network in Iraq is extensive. It is never just one.”

In addition to training the soldiers patrolling the streets and searching buildings to defeat the IED threat, Fort Irwin also focuses training at the commander level. In Echo Troop commander Capt. Bowe Averill’s backpack, he carries Iraqi currency, which he can hand out to Iraqis in exchange for information about IED locations and networks. At Fort Irwin, the cash is nothing more than play-money, but in Iraq, the monetary incentive can save lives.

At the leadership level, Calvert said Fort Irwin trains incoming commanders how to work with the Iraqi economic system to encourage growth. They partner the regimental commanders with provisional reconstruction teams, specialists concentrating on rebuilding Iraq’s beleaguered economy and giving the unemployed Iraqis jobs.

“We want to develop economic opportunities that alleviate the pull of the (insurgent forces),” Calvert said. “Give them something better to look for and to do than trying to place IEDs against us.”

Calvert said it is part of a campaign to win over the Iraqi people and show them that the United States is there to do good. Marrs agreed. He said Iraqis approached by IED networks need the money and fear saying no will bode ill for their families, crops and livelihood.

“If you were married with children, would you blow up a convoy to save your family?,” Marrs said. “Most people will say no because it’s the wrong thing to do, but you know you would. We’ve got to convince them that it’s going to be better for them to work with us than the terrorists.”

But for those Iraqis, either at Fort Irwin or in Iraq, who chose to work with the terrorists, they must deal with soldiers like Gray before they can inflict damage on collation forces.

Back on his rock, Gray takes the training seriously. He and his patrol partner, Spc. Michael Roley, investigate each and every movement in the valley below with their night-vision goggles. Gray keeps his M4 close to his chest; Roley rests his massive M249 Squad Automatic Weapon — the SAW — on a rock in front of him, ready to fire at any enemy attempting to approach their rocks. At Fort Irwin, their weapons do not shoot bullets, but lasers, the kills do not actually kill, but the threats, especially from IEDs, are real enough to put the soldiers back in Iraq for a moment.

“IEDs never leave your mind,” Gray said looking over the desert and up into the lights of the Fort Irwin garrison a handful of miles away. “The crazy thing about this is, my wife’s right there instead of 30,000 miles away.”

Contact the writer:

(760) 256-4121 or aaron_aupperlee@link.freedom.com

Training to detain

During a routine patrol of a town in the Fort Irwin desert, troopers with the 2nd Squadron of the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment noticed a man lurking on the streets they suspected to be a terrorist. After a brief discussion with the Iraqi police force in the town, the troopers convinced the police to arrest the man, now a detainee in the military’s eyes.

The terrorist’s detainment was part of a training exercise at Fort Irwin. Soldiers train on all the steps of detainment at Fort Irwin, from the arrest to testimony at trial.

Capt. Jay Burns, a Judge Advocate General serving with the 11th ACR, said the military can detain a person for two reasons in Iraq — either suspicion of committing a criminal act or for intelligence purposes. Burns, a licensed lawyer in Tennessee, makes sure they follow the rules.

“To the unit, I say, ‘Give me what you got that tells me this is a bad guy,’” Burns said. “It’s the same kind of mentality we’re used to in everyday law enforcement.”

He said after detainment, the unit must collect evidence to support their actions. They search for weapons caches, maps or other incriminating items. They take photographs of the evidence, the scene of the detainment, and interview the detainee. If there is a need to interrogate, the unit calls in a professional interrogator to avoid abuses.

Burns monitors the treatment of the detainees. The 11th ACR’s base at Fort Irwin contains a detainment facility complete with a wash area and prayer area for religious detainees.

The detainee is granted a trial in an Iraqi court before an Iraqi judge with a western conception of due process, Burns said. The central court of Iraq is in Baghdad. Many times, the soldiers who made the arrest are called to testify in the trial. Sometimes, though, soldiers transfer some place in the country or out of the country, and the Army cannot locate them. Burns said keeping track of witnesses is difficult, but important.

“The most evidence comes from the soldiers who captured the individual,” he said.

In the case of the man arrested in the town, soldiers later found a cache linked to the man, evidence they will most likely present at the simulated trial.