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These work alongside the infantry battalions fighting on the front line in Helmand province, and can be called upon to deal with any IEDs soldiers find.
Lieutenant Paul Lucy, an officer heading up the Royal Engineers - half of one of the teams that spent the winter months in Afghanistan - said: "Searchers have metal detectors, but the main tool they use is their eyeballs. The metal detector is a great piece of kit but the key thing is looking 20-30m ahead for ground signs."
Lt Lucy's role is a Royal Engineer Search Advisor, heading up a team which includes himself, a team commander who directs searching on the ground; a second-in-command, responsible for the team's kit; and a number of sappers who carry out the searches: "My role on the ground is to assess what the threat would be - things change on a minute by minute basis."
Searches can be painstakingly slow, although this depends on what's going on around the soldiers: "It's usually a slow and safe pace, but depends on whether you are being shot at or what the lines of sight are like around you," said Lt Lucy.
When an IED is found, the bomb-disposal expert will be called forward, performing the so-called long walk out to the device before rendering it safe or destroying it.
That two EOD operators were awarded George Crosses earlier this year speaks volumes about their role in the team: "A search team wouldn't go anywhere without an EOD operator and his team, because there's no point in finding something if it then can't be dealt with," said Lt Lucy.
His team were flown in with Royal Welch infantry soldiers during Operation MOSHTARAK, a combined effort with the Afghan National Army to break into the Babaji area of Helmand: "We found two or three bomb factories and at least ten devices," he said. At first the bombs were 'blown in place' rather than rendered safe. "As the security threat from small arms and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] lowered, they take their time to recover more devices intact."
Any adaptations to the crude bombs are noted, as are patterns of migration of certain devices into different areas. Both could provide vital evidence of links to particular bomb-making factories, as well as helping soldiers to avoid them.
The C-IED teams move around Helmand province over the course of their six-month tours.
Captain Gareth Bateman, Second-in-Command of the Joint Force EOD Group, explained: "You might find a team in Sangin is absolutely thrashed going on planned operations every day, while others are not so busy. We rotate them to maintain momentum among the battlegroups and keep the teams fresh as well, as you can imagine, the concentration levels these guys require is very high."
The same is true for an unlikely addition to the bomb squads - the Belgian Shepherd. A sleek, powerful and fit breed of dog with a proven ability to cope with the heat and a good nose for sniffing out bombs; these animals are now part of any Counter IED team.
The 1st Military Working Dogs Regiment has a permanent spot in Camp Bastion, making sure the animals meet the crucially high standard required.
They are trained to walk ahead of their handler, with nose to the ground, sniffing for any signs of hidden IEDs.
Staff Sergeant Quigley, the chief trainer for high assurance search dogs as they are known, said: "It doesn't matter which component they find - the battery or wire, they just stop, and the search team then take over - they provide the early warning protection.
"Getting a dog to walk in a straight line is the hardest part of the training. But if the dog doesn't have his head stuck to the floor he doesn't stand a chance of finding it, so he has to have his nose down all of the time."
Chocolat, as he is know to his handler, is one of the dogs who has seen such action, including a ride in a Chinook helicopter which evacuated him from the front line, as a medical emergency.
But it wasn't an IED that saw him land in Bastion's hospital for treatment, but a chance encounter with some barbed wire which badly slashed his belly: "The team medics are trained to resuscitate dogs and to put intravenous lines into them," explained Capt Bateman. "The dogs are as valuable as soldiers - not least because of the time it takes to train them."
Chocolat has since recovered and, along with the other working dogs, is regularly running rings around the handlers who take them out running when they do their physical training:
"The dogs go running with us to help [them] acclimatise, and they are fit animals - they'll take a drink and look at us as if to say 'let's go again'," said SSgt Quigley.
An alternative to man or beast, is to get a machine to simply blast through the belts of IEDs laid by insurgents.
This is exactly what happened when Royal Engineers deployed to operate the awesome Trojan - a tank equipped with a minefield-breaching system called Python, which utilises a rocket to deploy a high-explosive-filled "hosepipe" directly into a minefield or IED-laden route.
Trojan got its first outing during Operation MOSHTARAK when routes had to be cleared to allow vehicles to take stores, supplies and equipment to build up bases and support the troops working on the front line.
Lieutenant Jim Viney, the officer in charge of one of the Trojan tanks, said: "Our job was to fit a mine plough to the front of one of the Trojans and that vehicle went at the front of a long, large armoured convoy of around 50 vehicles and basically cleared the route of IEDs and made sure it was safe for further vehicles and civilians to travel on it.
"We were clearing the way for further patrols to come down and to make the area safer for those local nationals who live and work in that environment every day."
As well as digging up IEDs with its heavily-armoured plough, Trojan has the Python in tow, which can be fired to blast through belts of IEDs: "We all had our vehicle hatches closed down and when the rocket went off, there was a massive 'whoosh' and we could feel the pressure building as it left," said Lt Viney, whose team were the first to fire the weapon.
"A few seconds later the explosion went off and there was a big reverberation across the ground. The main feeling was of relief - that it had gone off and done its job."
Before it was fired commanders confirmed there were multiple IEDs in the area and checked there are no civilians nearby, making sure it was both worthwhile and safe: "You don't have a lot going through your head, other than that you're looking to the left and the right and at the tank in front of you, desperately trying to see if there are going to be any IEDs or insurgents in that area," said Lt Viney, reflecting on the operation.
"It's nerve-wracking and there's a sigh of relief when you get to your objective at the end of the day."
While Trojan was a success story during Operation MOSHTARAK, it could never replace the need for troops (and dogs) on the ground in towns and villages filled with people and their homes: "You use Trojan in areas where you wouldn't cause any collateral damage but as soon as you get into urban areas, start using us," said Capt Bateman.
"You wont be able to reassure the local nationals and talk to them and let them know what's going on if you go smashing through with a tank."
Their approach paid dividends during a tough winter tough, said Capt Bateman: "Rather than having to search to try to find IEDs, locals were starting to tell us where they were. They will have seen them placed or have been told by insurgents during shuras, and they passed that information on to us."
This article is taken from the August 2010 edition of Defence Focus - the magazine for everyone in Defence.
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