Air Force EOD team relies on high tech

Air Force EOD team relies on high tech

Raw nerves to dispose of suspicious package 
 
By Master Sgt. Lek Mateo
56th Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs Office
Texas Army National Guard

ALI AIR BASE, Iraq  Soldiers of the Texas Army National Guard’s 56th Brigade Combat Team, 36th Infantry Division, encounter explosive situations daily when they travel along Iraq’s highways during convoy escort missions, but things hit closer to home when they found a suspicious package with unfamiliar markings in a restroom trailer near their headquarters. 

 U.S. Air Force Security Forces of the 407th Air Expeditionary Group (AEG) along with Soldiers of the 56th BCT quickly evacuated everyone and cordoned off the area around the package.

 USAF expeditionary civil engineer squadron (ECES/CED) explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams that are specially trained to deal with explosive arrived on site with two of their high-technology robots within minutes of the call. The teams quickly deployed their space-age-looking vehicles to the area where the package was found to investigate and confirm if it was a bomb.

 Senior Airman Cameron L. Champion, a reservist from Dobbins Air Force Base, Atlanta, assigned to the 407th AEG ECES/CED, gingerly maneuvered the Remotec F-6A robot, which was tethered to a base station by a thin fiber optic cable where he was safely located, through a maze of concrete barriers and military vehicles in the headquarters parking lot to get to the package.

 Airman Champion recovered the package and relocated it to a safe area adjacent to an 18-inch thick reinforced concrete blast wall designed to protect people from the blast of an artillery rocket or mortar round.