Rookie Bomb Squads

Yesterday the Times reported that the first “Rookie” bomb squads will be deployed to Afghanistan to deal with the ever-present cruelly effective threat of IEDs. These soldiers are reportedly not fully trained as EOD operators and the report contains critical commentaries indicating that there are no “short cuts” in this most demanding area.

Of course Panorama has already reported that the MOD stopped training new recruits for 18 months in 2002 to cut costs and most of the bomb disposal operators, who have tragically lost their lives, are young men in my view, being in their late 20’s or early 30’s. But one of the pictures in the report gives away the wider problem. “A Royal Marine from 40 Commando searches for IEDs with a metal detector”. We know that the devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated with lower metal content. It is ordinary soldiers who have to search for and locate the devices before calling in the specialists.

The last Inquest I did into an IED death was that of a 19 year old soldier. Health & Safety gets a bad press every day of the week but you have to wonder what the risk assessment of this threat looked like prior to our commitment to deploy and whether it was the risk assessment or those deciding that we would take the risk that got it so wrong.