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thedrifter
09-17-08, 07:55 AM
MILITARY: Camp Pendleton to construct IED training facility

By MARK WALKER - Staff Writer

CAMP PENDLETON ---- Skills to detect roadside bombs on the training field rather than the battlefield are in the offing with the construction of a facility intended to help stem the carnage from the ubiquitous killers.

Known by the unwieldy title of improvised explosive device Home Station Training Lanes, the complex of roads, paths and mock buildings is set for development in the base's San Mateo region near San Clemente.

It will include more than three miles of paved roads, an overpass and traffic circles to teach troops how to spot the hidden bombs before they unleash a fusillade of molten shrapnel.

The bombs are responsible for a majority of the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading the Pentagon to spend $13 billion over the last four years developing countermeasures.

Those measures were the subject of a hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Base officials said complex construction is scheduled to begin in March with the facility expected to open by the spring of 2010.

John Carretti, director of the base's training resource management division, said it will include a classroom and recording equipment to conduct reviews and critiques. Curbs, sidewalks, guard rails, courtyard walls and intersections are part of the package to increase its realism.

Announcement of a construction contract is imminent, Carretti said in a written statement in response to inquiries.

Across the country in Washington, the head of the Pentagon agency created to counter improvised explosive devices said Tuesday that more than 1,400 explosions and bomb discoveries are recorded each month in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz said IEDs ---- the military's shorthand for roadside bombs ---- remain the primary weapon against U.S. and coalition troops in both wars and the number of such attacks may rise.

"These numbers have the capacity to go much higher because the enemy will continue to exploit readily available commercial technology to rapidly produce IEDs," Metz told a House Armed Services subcommittee.

Metz heads the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, a 3,600-employee group dedicated to developing detection and detonation techniques.

Appearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Metz said he believes the U.S. can eventually overcome roadside bombs through technology and focusing on the groups that fashion the explosives.

It's not an easy task, he said.

"We are in a long war and this is a tough weapon system to beat," Metz said.

His group is working on 301 counter-bomb initiatives and is supporting 78 technological projects, Metz said. It also is a proponent of the Camp Pendleton project, base officials said.

Since 2003, insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan recorded at least one troop casualty for every detected bomb. Metz said. Today, Metz said, that ratio has improved to one casualty for every nine detected bombs.

"In spite of our many successes in defeating devices and attacking networks, IEDs continue to threaten the safety and long-term strategic interests of the United States," Metz said.

In Iraq, roadside and suicide bombs are responsible for 752 of the 1,305 U.S. troop deaths recorded in and around Baghdad since the 2003 invasion. In the Anbar province to the west, where the majority of local Marines and sailors have been stationed, nearly 400 of the 1,302 U.S. troop deaths resulted from roadside bombings.

One recent local troop death from a roadside bomb came March 30, when the just-promoted Marine Lt.Col. William Hall of Temecula died from injuries suffered when the vehicle he was riding in was torn apart in a blast a day earlier near the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Hall was part of a police training team on his first assignment when he was killed, leaving behind a wife and four children.

"He had been working with them for about six weeks when he was killed," his widow, Xiomara Hall, said Tuesday.

As she and her children continue to recover from his loss through community support and family grief counseling, Hall said she doesn't view roadside bombs much differently than any other weapon.

"From the beginning of time, people have come up with different ways of killing," she said. "IEDs are just one more kind of booby trap."

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.

Ellie