The Virginian-Pilot December 1, 2005
With the 5th Fleet: Bomb crew disposes of all kinds of hazards
By Louis Hansen
JUFFAIR, Bahrain — As Iraqis surged to voting booths across the nation on Jan. 30, Petty Officer 1st Class Ken Lee headed for a polling station in western Iraq.
He ventured through small-arms fire and made it into a voting booth. There, he defused his first bomb – a set of mortar rounds rigged to detonate and planted by insurgents to disrupt the election.
“They break you in hard,” said Lee, 29, a swaggering sailor from Alabama.
He and other members of Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 4 snuff out threats. Based in the port city of Bahrain, the 10-member team can be a call and 24 hours away from a bomb-lined road in Baghdad.
Most recent U.S. service deaths have been caused by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Navy officials estimate that about 30 of them blow up each day in Iraq; many others are defused.
Attacks on U.S. troops by homemade bombs and suicide attackers have risen to 1,000 in September, from 750 a year earlier, according to the military think tank Globalsecurity.org.
It’s up to Lee and members of other bomb-hunting units, some trained at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach, to save lives by risking their own.
It’s not getting any easier, despite new tools, training and techniques.
The small detachment from Unit 4 works out of a pastel-painted building on the sprawling naval base in Bahrain. The tiny island state in the Persian Gulf, connected by causeway to Saudi Arabia, hosts a number of key naval security activities in the strife-filled region.
Lt. Mike Tollison, who commands the detachment, said their proximity to the fight has made it a valuable support unit to Marine and Army units.
“From here, we’re a stone’s throw away from Iraq,” said Tollison, 29, who trained at Little Creek and lives in Virginia Beach.
Technicians work in two- to four-member crews. Tollison’s group is also responsible for bomb disposal and training for U.S. allies in the Middle East.
A crew was dispatched to the Seychelle Islands after an early November pirate attack on the cruise liner Seabourn Spirit. They swept the boat and disposed of a rocket-propelled grenade fired during an unsuccessful attempt to loot the luxury liner.
The sailors are also trained divers for rescue and anti-mine efforts.
In Iraq, the team typically supports ground troops in convoys or expeditionary units. The soldiers and Marines call at the sight of a suspected homemade bomb.
The threat comes in all shapes and sizes – planted in truck tires, buried on the shoulders of roads, wrapped in concrete and sand bags.
“Up there,” Lee said, “they’re everywhere.”
The lethal devices are limited only by the maker’s imagination, Tollison said.
The bomb disposers, however, are more uniform in character – mostly male, young and fit.
They have to be in shape. To disarm a bomb, they wear 50-pound suits that offer head-to-toe protection. The thick suits are cooled by a circulation system that draws cold water from a melting ice pack.
But the system can’t always beat the 120 -degree desert heat, or provide enough mobility. In combat, they sometimes wear only their flak jackets for protection.
The military has developed new models of bomb-searching robots. The remote-controlled devices can be moved from up to a mile away, climb stairs, and send back infra red images of potential hazards.
The crew has lost two robots, which cost approximately $30,000 each.
Iraqi insurgents, Tollison said, “don’t particularly like the robots.”
But, Lee added, it’s cheaper than the alternative – losing a sailor.
Lee wears his dog tags slung around his sand-covered boots. His legs might survive a blast better than his torso. He has been stationed in Bahrain for 2½ years. Tollison arrived in October.
The bombers have changed tactics as the allies have become more adept at spotting and disarming the threats.
“They’re actually getting smarter. They watch us,” Lee said. “It’s like a cat-and-mouse game.”
Tollison agreed: “It’s a thinking person’s game.”
© Copyright 2005, The Virginian-Pilot
