IDGA Q&A with Thomas Dale: Enabling Ground Forces for Improved IED Detection

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Mr. Thomas L. Dale is a retired First Sergeant and a veteran of OIF I, III, and IV. Mr. Dale has developed and executed a Counter IED training program for the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE) that all initial entry Soldiers, both enlisted and officer,  receive at Fort Benning, Georgia. This program trains both individual and collective tasks for Soldiers in TRADOC and FORSCOM units. The  training reaches over 20,000 Soldiers annually in critical IED tasks.  All Soldiers are trained on basic CIED and IEDD skills that have the potential to save lives in combat. Mr. Dale’s team produces and distributes a monthly publication, the MCoE IED Defeat Newsletterthat is circulated throughout the military and various training centers. His team has been instrumental in the designing and development of MCoE CIED training Lanes, the integration of virtual, live and constructive training, and supporting various lines of efforts with inputs on CIED across the spectrum.

Mr. Dale has held many key positions throughout his Military career, to include Observer Controller at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin and he served as a First Sergeant for over five years, three of those years while deployed to Combat.

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IDGA: You’re involved with training ground forces to better enable them to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs).  Generally speaking, how adept is the average warfighter, currently, at this detection?

TD: Today’s environment our soldiers and leaders find themselves in is not a linear problem set.  According to TRADOC, the challenges of conducting military operations on land remain fundamentally unchanged.  However, there is an increase in the complexity of the environment, a dizzying pace of technology change and an emergence of hybrid threats—regular, irregular, criminal, and terrorists—who decentralized, network and syndicate against us [United States].  There is no single cause and effect.  More importantly, every attempted course of action has effects that create new situations.  The methodology used in IED detection is only one element within the Counter-IED (CIED) system.  CIED efforts are mutually supporting and simultaneously executed.  Thus, the average warfighter is bombarded by environmental issues influencing the criteria of detection. 

IDGA: Can you talk about the CIED training provided by the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE)?

TD: At the MCoE we train various levels of soldiers in the operational and training domains. We use a variety of training areas and training methods to ensure every soldier who trains at the MCoE walks away with the basic understanding of CIED operations. These include how they work, how they are employed, and what are key CIED indicators. By installing these basic skills into every soldier who trains at the MCoE, he or she will arrive at their unit with the basic IED knowledge. Leaders at the operational unit can then hone these skills and integrate these new soldiers into their units and provide cohesive and extremely functional units that can fight, win, and survive on any operational domain in the world.

 IDGA: What are the best processes to improve soldiers’ ability in IED detection?

TD: First, IEDs remain the single most dangerous threat to our soldiers—all branches and all ranks—on the battlefield.  They are not an asymmetric threat; they are very clearly an enduring threat.  In order to succeed in CIED operations, unrelenting pressure must be applied to IED networks; it is a complex effort that is greater than just IED detection.  Second, training is cyclic and the results are perishable, thus training is constant at home-station and while deployed. 

IDGA: What does IED detection involve?

TD: IED detection involves Attacking the Network and Defeating the Device.  Attacking the Network includes engagements designed to reduce IED effects and interrupt the enemy's chain of IED activities by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities and enabling offensive operations.  The offensive action disrupts the enemy's innovation cycle and buys time to create additional IED countermeasures.  This effort is accomplished through intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, information operations, counter-bomber targeting, device technical and forensic exploitation, disposal of unexploded and captured ordnance, and persistent surveillance directed toward defeat of the enemy's capabilities.  Operations to kill or capture network members provide the final, critical step in the process.

Enabling detection includes actions taken by TRADOC organizations to enhance the commanders’ freedom of maneuver for safe operations, discover IEDs, and reduce the effects of IED detonation at the point of attack.  They include rapid identification, development, acquisition, and delivery of capabilities for route clearance; device neutralization, explosive detection, military explosive ordnance disposal, and vehicle and personnel protection. Defeating the Device also has a secondary outcome that makes IED networks more vulnerable to interdiction, effectively enabling the Attack the Networkline of effort. 

With that said, effective training is the cornerstone of IED detection success.  Through training, leaders, soldiers, andunits achieve the tactical and technical competence that builds confidence and agility.  Army forces train using doctrine that sustains their expeditionary and campaign capabilities.  Focused training preparesleaders, soldiers, and units to deploy, fight, and win.  Achieving this competence requires specific, dedicatedtraining.  The Army trains soldiers and unitsdaily in individual and collective tasks under challenging, realistic conditions.  More importantly, training continues in deployedunits to enable soldiers to sustain skills and adapt to changes in the operational environment. 

Finally, the fluidity of the IED threat demands a systematic TTP and lessons learned validation and integration approach.  Knowing and understanding changes is key, and requires a usable methodology on the development and updating of CIED training concepts and strategies for training soldiers, leaders, and units to operate, survive, and win in an operating environment given IEDs are an enduring threat.  More importantly, the methodology involving key CIED stakeholders recognizes that CIED training requirements, courses, and capabilities evolve and change as the threat adapts and new training and materiel solutions are developed.

 Thomas L. Dale, Team Lead, CIED, for the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE), will be speaking at IDGA’s 6^th Annual Counter IED Summit, to be held from Jan. 23-25 in Alexandria, Vir.  For more information on the event, visit www.counteriedsummit.com, or call 1-800-882-8684.

Contributor:   Christopher Dauer

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Report Abuse   chrisdauer 11/30/2011 9:42:07 AM EST While there will obviously always be specific details involving the nation’s defense that will be regarded as classified, Mr. Dale is actually able to discuss a number of priorities, methods, and areas of focus involving CIED training. Part two of this conversation includes how soldiers can experience realistic combat situations before deployment, some of the required techniques needed to improve training, and how some of the current trends in training are a departure from previous methods. Mr. Dale will go into even greater detail about how the U.S. is training its ground forces in this vital area at the Summit in January. Thank you for your comment. Replies (0) Post a reply Sign in or Sign up to post a comment

Report Abuse   andrei_bykov 11/30/2011 2:27:22 AM EST Understandably, Mr. Thomas L. Dale can not go to the substance of CIED Tranning for obvious reasons. The question arises do such interviews have any value for the interested audience, if at all? Replies (0) Post a reply Sign in or Sign up to post a comment