It’s a scenario straight out of Hollywood: A Russian pilot ejects from a hijacked F-4 Phantom and leaves behind an improvised nuclear device that will detonate in 90 minutes. Can your bomb-disposal robot deactivate it in time to save the world?
All week long in the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, military and civilian bomb squads from around the country have considered this and other potential threats in the 13th annual Robot Rodeo test of extreme emergency preparedness.
“Our goal is to push these security and explosives experts and their robots to the very edge of their skill sets and capabilities,” Jake Deuel, robotics manager at Sandia National Laboratories, told The Washington Times.
The federally funded Sandia lab, which designs and sponsors the free event, has roots stretching back to World War II and the Manhattan Project’s development of the first atomic bombs.
With a culture blending innovation and the rugged terrain of the nearby Sandia Mountains, lab experts host 10 teams that compete in a dozen 90-minute challenges from Monday to Friday. The rodeo includes a large dose of training to assure teams take their lessons learned back to their units.
Competitors this year included police forces from New Mexico, Texas and California. But the event’s core is the highly trained individuals responsible for disarming and disposing of bombs — Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams. EOD officers are considered to have the one of the most dangerous occupations in the military.
Mr. Deuel says they can be hard to rattle, but that is the point of the rodeo.
“If they curse at me, that is a good sign, because it means we’ve done our job,” he said and laughed, adding that most teams tell him the rodeo has been the best training they’ve ever had.
Kicking up desert dust, EOD robots jerk and strain while traversing stairs, entering downed planes and navigating faux-radioactive sites.
All branches of the military cooperate, in addition to several U.S. agencies, including the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Transportation Security Administration.
This year TSA worked with Albuquerque International Sunport, which donated a decommissioned 727 jetliner once used for mail delivery. The plane’s cargo bay this week was packed with a bomb-laden piece of luggage that robots had to climb up in and find.
“We put our imaginations to use,” Mr. Deuel said, adding that another scenario involved mannequins representing terrorists with suicide vests dangling inside the central shaft of Sandia’s 200-foot-tall National Solar Thermal Test Facility.
Once a critical piece of the U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, EOD teams were central in combating insurgent fighters who created homemade bombs to maim and kill American soldiers.
Top defense officials recently said EOD troops and modernization remain a major priority.
Army Lt. Gen. Reynold Hoover, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, late last year told the National Defense Industrial Association global summit in Bethesda, Maryland, that the U.S. must maintain its vigilance in defeating improvised explosive devices, especially as “North Korea, Iran and terrorist organizations are developing weapons and tactics we haven’t even seen before.”
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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