Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit by Sean Rayment Page B

non-conductive material that is keeping two electric terminals apart. When the terminals touch, the bomb functions. The other category is the ‘command wire’ device, which is detonated by an insurgent connecting the bomb to a power supply, such as a car battery, when a potential target is in range. In Helmand, command wires up to 200 metres long have been found. With the power source, which often contains a high proportion of metal, so far away from the explosive, these are very difficult to discover with a metal detector.
    IEDs can also be detonated by a trip wire. One example of this kind of device is the Russian-made POMZ, which is effectively an anti-personnel fragmentation grenade mounted on a wooden stick. When a soldier approaches the device, an insurgent gives the wire a gentle tug to pull the pin out of the grenade, causing it to detonate in less than a second. These devices can also be detonated by the victim walking into a trip wire.
    ‘IED production has gone beyond being a cottage industry,’ Major Gould continued. ‘They are now being knocked out on an industrial scale at the rate of one every fifteen to twenty minutes. This is something which is very difficult to target because, when you see the nature of the devices, they are so simple but very effective. I wouldn’t say the bombs are bodged – but they’re not far from it. But that doesn’t matter. They are still very effective and they do the job. They don’t have to be state-of-the-art – quality control is minimal – but the beauty of these things is that they work. You can leave a pressure-plate IED buried in the ground for a month, maybe more, and it can still kill.
    ‘During the Northern Ireland period the IRA were incredibly sophisticated – the IRA wouldn’t put a device on the street unless they were 100 per cent sure that it would function. In Helmand there is absolutely no quality control. The bombs are knocked together with any old rubbish, which can make the device very unstable. You could sneeze and it would function, you could be working on it and the ground around you could collapse and it could function, or it could function just because you are moving the earth close to it. The IRA built devices with “ready-to-arm” switches but we haven’t seen anything like that here. The bombs might not be much to look at but they are very effective and they are killing and injuring lots of troops and civilians.’
    Intelligence has emerged suggesting that Iran has been training Taliban snipers and bomb makers, a worrying development with similarities to the situation facing the allies in Iraq. Iranian intervention in Iraq was responsible for killing and injuring hundreds of British troops.
    During 2006 and 2007, IEDD teams deployed to Afghanistan for four months. Back then there were only two British bomb-disposal teams in Helmand. Iraq was still the main focus for IED disposal. But that changed in 2008, when Helmand was redefined as a high-threat environment and the tour of duty was extended to six months. In the space of two years the number of Taliban attacks had surged by more than 300 per cent. Soldiers were being killed and injured almost daily and the IEDs were also being used to target ATOs. When news that the tour was to be longer was announced, none of the ATOs being sent to Helmand complained; they simply did as they were told.
    By January 2010 serious concerns were beginning to be voiced over the pressure facing ATOs and other members of the bomb-hunting teams. Everyone working in EOD was aware that all three of the ATOs who had so far died in Helmand had been almost two-thirds of the way through their tours. It was the same story for an ATO who was seriously injured. The exception was Captain Dan Read, who deployed to Helmand on Operation Herrick 11 and was injured in October 2009 and was sent back to the UK as part of his recovery. He returned to Helmand in early January 2010 and was subsequently killed in action in Musa