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In a Feb. 13 briefing, Metz outlined U.S. plans to enhance training and
equipping of forces to battle IEDs and the new Explosively-Formed
Projectiles, designed and manufactured by Iran. The army general said his
agency intended to combine training and technology to counter roadside and
car bombs, Middle East Newsline reported.
"The strength of my background is training soldiers, and I think we can
make great headway here," Metz said.
The Pentagon organization, with a budget of $3.45 billion, has turned to
the amusement industry to help replicate an IED attack. Officials said a
cellular phone system was installed at the Joint Center of Excellence, with
headquarters at the National Training Center, at Fort Irwin, Calif., so
troops could learn how communications trigger IEDs. In addition, the center
was provided with a replica of an Iraqi home.
"If someone has been making a homemade explosive, they have been working
with acid, and most likely their hands are going to be stained," Metz said.
"And nitric acid comes in black two-liter bottles. So if you're searching,
and you find the owner of the home has got stained hands and in the backyard
garbage can are black bottles of nitric acid, you probably have a
bomb-maker."
The Defense Department has proposed a $591.3 million budget for fiscal
2009 to train soldiers against IEDs, the source of 60 percent of U.S.
casualties in Iraq. Officials said the funding would cover the training of
new arrivals in Iraq in skills required to identify IED networks.
Officials said a key element in IED training was to provide real-life
simulation in an effort for patrols to detect bombmakers and their tools. In
Kuwait, U.S. troops and their commanders were being instructed at the Udairi
Range.
"It's one thing to train individual soldiers to use a device, and we are
certainly getting about doing that, but it is the collective training of the
leader pulling together so that the total is greater than the sum of the
parts," Metz said. "At the staff level, it goes back to this understanding,
using the tools and capturing the data that help you put together that
network and understand the parts and know when to attack."
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