28 April 2009

A quick email from Borneo Island:

Day nine of the tracking course was the most interesting so far.  We started with classroom work then headed to the field.  We spent all day in an area that closely resembles many parts of Afghanistan.  It was plenty hot, too.

Unfortunately, I cannot write much detail about today’s course due to the sensitivity of the subject.  The little bit that can be said is that we were training to address the IED threat.

In broad strokes, today’s training involved a team who put out a “mechanical ambush” very similar to those we see in the war.  I went out with a team of four British soldiers who set up the ambush.  All are Afghanistan veterans.  The only difference between today’s ambush and what I have seen in the war is that the British are far more proficient than the enemy, and so the ambush was much better constructed than most of the real ones I have been through.  For instance, the British soldiers used better deceptions than the enemy normally uses, and so in that regard today’s course was actually, I believe, more difficult than what the soldiers will face when they return to the battlefield.  Otherwise, everything was dead on.

The ambush was set and a tracking team moved in to try to detect it.  And so, I saw the ambush being put in, and then tagged along with the soldiers who were trying to detect it without getting flattened in the process.

This time the ambushers won, but what can be said with certainty was that this tracking training was actually enough to alert the soldier, but his little voice, though heeded, was not quite enough this time.  Again, this ambush was far better than one normally sees in the actual war.  I think that if it were Afghanistan, the very brave but dimwitted Taliban would have blown their cover in this particular instance.

The U.S. military is conducting tracking training.  In fact, the British instructors talk about it every day, and some have gone to the American training, which they say is quite good.  Yet I don’t see American soldiers downrange who use serious tracking skills.  The British instructors actually know a lot of the American tracking-kin, and have invited them to Borneo, but apparently none have come so far.  In any case, the British instructors say our military tracking program is actually very good, but like the British, it’s small by comparison to what could be done.  You can see thousands of soldiers wearing jump wings signifying they’ve gone to jump school -- after having gone through that expensive training --who never jump and have no need to jump.  Parachuting is a completely useless skill for most soldiers.  Useless and expensive.  Tracking training is incredibly useful and cheap.

While I was in Special Forces we conducted a fair amount of tracking and counter-tracking training, but it was nothing this good.

Tomorrow, I’ll start introducing the British instructors.  It is important to point out that they have a standing invitation for American military to come over for jungle training, or tracking training.  They’ve offered that I can stay for the jungle course, but alas it’s about time to get back in the war.

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