MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT, San Diego -- Company D recruits attentively looked out for simulated improvised explosive devices on the IED detection course during the Crucible, Feb. 22, at Weapons Field Training Battalion, Camp Pendleton, Calif. The course helps prepare recruits for combat situations by familiarizing them with the signs of IEDs.
This course is just one of the many that recruits were tasked with while undergoing the Crucible. The Crucible is a 54-hour test of endurance in which recruits must conquer more than 30 difficult obstacles while they experience food and sleep deprivation. The Crucible requires that they use all they have learned during 12 weeks of recruit training.
An improvised explosive device is a homemade bomb that uses available explosives, and is disguised as an innocuous object placed as a booby-trap, or buried. The IED may incorporate destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic or incendiary chemicals and is designed to destroy, incapacitate, harass or distract.
Enemies who blend with the local environment and general public are hard to detect and can threaten the unit from any direction. Security must be maintained through 360-degrees, at all times.
During the Crucible field instructors train recruits to look at the terrain from the enemy perspective.
“The course gives recruits a baseline of how to look for anomalies that may expose an IED,” said Sgt. George O’Donnell, field instructor, Edson Range, Camp Pendleton.
On the course recruits walk in tactical columns, always staying alert for anything they think looks suspicious. During the exercise, field instructors set up trip wires and simulated IEDs to see if recruits can spot them. When a simulated IED is detonated, it releases a cloud of white powder to mark recruits and simulate combat casualties.
“It was hard to recognize what was an IED and what was just put there as a distraction,” said Recruit Blake A. Rutledge, 23, Platoon 1074, Co. D. The recruits stopped often to view a stick or a leaf, being overly conscious of the surrounding environment and hoping not to set off a simulated IED. These devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and harder to detect. “Insurgents are adapting to our ways,” said O’Donnell.
According to the Washington Post, a 30 percent rise in the planting of IEDs by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan this year has resulted in more wounded Americans and coalition troops. But fewer of them are dying. IEDs remain the main cause of deaths in the war, with more than half coming from roadside bombings last year.
“The earlier we introduce IEDs into training, the better prepared our Marines will be when they need to be,” said O’Donnell.