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Airmen combat explosive threats in Afghanistan

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Rachel Martinez
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan --  The phone rings. A three-man team grabs their pre-packed gear and jumps in a truck or a waiting helicopter. These Airmen don't always know where they are going, how long they will be gone, or exactly what they will encounter - all they know is there is an explosive device somewhere and they need to make it safe.

As the threat of improvised explosive devices increased in Afghanistan, the need for more explosive ordnance disposal teams arose. Air Force EOD teams were asked to expand their scope from the airfield and are now responsible for approximately 46 percent of the EOD missions in Afghanistan. The 755th Air Expeditionary Group EOD Operation Location-Bravo, located at Kandahar Air Field, serves as the logistical hub and command element for seven different forward operating bases in Regional Command-East and Regional Command-South.

In addition to serving as a support hub, the 755th AEG EOD OL-B has its own mission to support. They are responsible for all explosive hazards on Kandahar Air Field, as well as the area surrounding the base, and provide a helicopter response team for all of RC-South.

"Our area of operations changes dramatically depending on who picks up the phone and calls," explained Tech. Sgt. Ronald White, an EOD technician deployed from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.

Their mission can also change dramatically from one to the next. They are responsible for handling all the ammunition turned in to the amnesty box on base, but a majority of their missions involve disabling IEDs. For many of their missions, they rely on their mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The vehicles are loaded with all the required EOD equipment and multiple kinds of radios.

"Ninety five percent of this truck is built around disarming IEDs," said Sergeant White. "Inside this truck our radios will talk to anybody. We operate with all kinds of different countries, all kinds of different units, and they all have different radios, they all have different frequencies. We have to be able to talk to all of them."

The team tries to do most of their work inside the truck using robots. Senior Airman Emily Walker, deployed from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is the robot driver on her three-man EOD team. Her job is to try to dismantle any device by robot while inside the truck.

"My team chief's job is to go down there and actually dismantle it by hand if I can't do it by robot," said the native of Brownsville, Calif. "So I do what I can to keep my team chief from having to go down there or getting killed."

With such high stakes, the team spends every spare minute training and checking their equipment. Training and operating in a deployed environment is much different than home station.

"It was my very first IED. I was driving the robot for another team and I ended up triggering the device with my robot," said Staff Sgt. Tyson Johnson, an EOD technician deployed from Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. "The IED went off and we were probably 50 to 60 meters away. That's when I realized that it wasn't practice anymore."

Airman Walker said she loves driving the robot, but her favorite part of the job is going on missions and living in the field. Just days after arriving in Afghanistan, she forward deployed with U.S. Marines to Qalat, Afghanistan. For 45 days, she and her teammates worked and lived out of their truck.

"My favorite part is when we go out and have nothing - you have your team and the people you are deployed with," she said. "We had nothing. We were out in the middle of nowhere. It's exhilarating when you go out there. And it's fun, and it's challenging. It's extremely challenging."

In addition to the danger posed from the IEDs, the EOD teams are risking insurgent attack every time they travel outside the wire.

"We are pretty safe in our trucks," said Sergeant Johnson. "We've got a lot of things to keep us remotely separated from the hazards. And the scenes are usually pretty secure when we get there."

Things can still happen though. While returning from a mission in Lashkar Gar, the convoy Sergeant Johnson was riding in came under attack. A few rocket propelled grenades were fired and the convoy took some small arms fire.

"A couple of rounds embedded in the back of the armor where me and another guy were sitting," he said. "It was a pretty intense couple of minutes - it seemed like forever. I was stuck in the back of a vehicle - no way to see what was going on, no way to fire back. I just wanted to do whatever I could to help the guys on top gunning. You just do what you have to do in those situations."

Like the trip to Lashkar Gar, many of their missions take them a considerable distance from Kandahar Air Field. In these cases, they often travel by helicopter. In these cases, each team member grabs one of two pre-packed backpacks weighing more than 50 pounds each.

"We've got two different explosive set-ups - one for if we know we are going to be gone for a long time, and one for if we know we are just going and coming back," explained Sergeant Johnson, a native of Salt Lake City, Utah. "We've got all of our stuff we need to do the mission - time fuse, TNT, smoke grenades. We're able to do anything we would do with our truck, to a limited extent, without having to come back to base."

"The biggest thing about this flyaway kit is what's not on it," added Sergeant White. "You'll notice that each person is carrying between 50 and 80 pounds of gear. There's no sleeping bags, no pillows, no toothbrushes, no deodorant, there's none of that. When an Army unit deploys out, each person is carrying between 50 and 70 pounds, but in that is everything he needs to live. We have 50 to 70 pounds of gear - and that's it."

In the nearly six months the 755th AEG EOD OL-B has been deployed they have responded to more than 326 incidents and destroyed nearly 131,000 munitions. For many of the EOD technicians, it is not about destroying things, it's really about the people and making it a safer place for them.

"Every time we go outside the wire, I depend on (Sergeant White) to save my life, and he depends on me to save his life," said Sergeant Johnson. "Having to rely on somebody to do that day in and day out is huge. You don't get that with other friends back home, you don't get that anywhere else.

"There are experiences here that you will never get anywhere else," he added. "I love the people I am here with, but war is hell. The people are really what it's about - being here and saving Sergeant White, saving Airman Walker, saving whoever it is who is going to be on the road next."