Done with IRT

Well IRT is officially over, and now its time to enjoy a four day weekend with Becky and my mom who's flying in today! We've got a reservation tomorrow night at our favorite local restaurant--The Craftwood Inn (where we had our anniversary).

So training concluded yesterday with a lesson in modern CREW--Counter Radio-Controlled IED Electronic Warfare. This is the latest and greatest in current methods being used to prevent IEDs from detonating. There's dozens of different types of machines out there that the military is currently using, but we focused our efforts on the Warlock Duke (by the way this is unclassified, so don't worry). The Duke is very expensive 1 cubic foot box which can be filled with frequencies from a PDA or laptop. The idea is, you roll out the gate on a convoy or patrol and turn the box on voila...the box emits all these frequencies at a VERY high power and any receiver connected to an IED within your "bubble" that responds to one of these frequencies will be distracted by the Duke and unable to hear the transmitter---therefore unable to explode. This works great against cell phones, pagers, walkie-talkies, garage door openers and car remotes, just to name a few.

It's important to know that this only works against Radio-controlled IEDs, not other kinds, but this makes up a huge chunk of the bad stuff over there, so it's definitely a plus. Another system we learned about is Compass Call, which is a large CREW system which can go in a C-130 jet. Not only can this jam a very large area, but it can do the exact opposite....it has the option of sending out a large wave of varying frequencies all at once over a large area and actually detonate any RC IEDs that may be around. This is often used in the middle of the night, when people aren't wondering the streets, thus helping to clear the route before any convoys or patrols head out. Neat eh?