Soldiers are ramping up their knowledge of countering Improvised Explosive Devices at Fort Campbell with a two-part education program that combines both local hands-on and the recent addition of mobile interactive training.

All deploying units are required to establish a Capabilities Integration Team that is proficient in Counter-IED tasks, with a stated mission of providing units with a single contact for defeating IEDs.

Fred Silhol is site manager and trainer for Mobile CIT training stations that employ the use of four trailers to comprise different training phases, to serve as “a squad leader’s training tool,” Silhol said.

Located on post until September – Silhol is heading up the more virtual aspects of training Soldiers before they deploy.

“When we arrive at an installation, we conduct briefings for units on how to integrate MCIT training into their training plans,” Silhol said. “We become part of the installation’s team, they don’t become part of ours.”

All trailers have a separate purpose and function with instructional videos and virtual simulations, which are prompted by motion sensors and timers. Simulations include:

• Trailer 1: IEDs are nothing new.

• Trailer 2: How to think and act like an insurgent

• Trailer 3: Mission brief and crew devices

• Trailer 4: Training simulation

A couple of the mobile trailers are dressed up to mimic the décor of an insurgent dwelling, including staged placement of materials that might be used to make IEDS.

The videos consist of actual stories from Soldiers who have survived IED attacks, as well as insurgent dramatizations to enhance a Soldier’s understanding of how insurgents make use of explosives.

Trainees also engage with humvee and map simulations that are controlled by touch screen and a handheld controller.

Additionally, all Soldiers must complete a quiz at the end of the training session.

The system applied with MCIT lends a different approach to the readiness in IED awareness to be combined with training that Soldiers already receive at Fort Campbell.

Noncommissioned officers are taken through MCIT prior to beginning training. “It’s so they know how to point everything out,” Silhol said. “Because the subject matter experts on IEDs are those who’ve been in country three or four times and have all the latest information.”

Training to defeat IEDs encompasses many areas, one vital component being an awareness of one’s environment, as Spc. Joseph Carr, 101st HHB Division Command, shows other Soldiers how their surroundings can be used against them.

Carr helps by teaching Soldiers to know that the line of sight is what you look for, and that’s from 5 to 25 meters outside their humvee.

With Afghanistan as the focus now, Carr said that the terrain can prove to be especially hazardous and Soldiers should be ready to enter that rugged environment.

“When you get out of your vehicle, you may have only a few feet between a mountain and the edge of a cliff,” he said. “That’s what the roads are like out there.”

A vehicle may not always detonate an IED on the first pass, Carr saying that the placement of IEDs may be predictable but the time frame isn’t.

“It’s an important focus since that’s mostly what the enemy gets us with,” Carr said. “The main thing is to put the focus on doing [training].”

His portion is only one of several segments to the in-class training for IEDs. “Our job is to teach and show the proper ways to search, but depending on where you’re at, there’s so many ways to do that.”

With a start-up date of June 2009, there are a total of three MCIT systems spread across Fort Campbell, Camp Shelby and Camp Pendleton, all totally mobile and all with the stated goal of further preparing Soldiers to defeat IEDs.

As an additional training tool for the homebase training of the Counter IED Academy, it serves as another segment that to the in-class sessions Soldiers already receive on post.

Based solely on current numbers out of Afghanistan from www.iCasualties.org, IED deaths spiked to its highest level yet as a cause of death in 2009, responsible for 275 total IED fatalities, accounting for over 60 percent of the 450 killed. That percentage hasn’t fallen much in 2010.