BAGHDAD, Iraq – His voice is as flat and unemotional as one might hope to hear from someone trained to disarm and dispose of bombs.
Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Justin Hamaker, 31, is an explosive ordnance disposal team leader out of U.S. Naval Air Station in Sigonella, Italy. He is among 20 sailors supporting the Army’s 79th Ordnance Battalion.
Hamaker’s team is on call 12 hours a day in and around Baghdad. Typically, the calls come from soldiers who find weapon caches or from convoys stopped near what may be a roadside bomb.
The military calls them improvised explosive devices, and they remain the deadliest weapon of the Iraqi insurgency. Last month, such bombs killed 74 U.S. service members, the highest monthly toll since they began to appear along Iraqi roadways in July 2003, four months after the U.S. invasion.
Hamaker’s unit hasn’t suffered casualties but they have had close calls, he explained.
“Had IEDs go off on vehicles in our convoys,” he said. “Had RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) shot at us. Take small arms fire pretty regularly.”
The greatest threat in Iraq is not from handling unexploded bombs or weapon caches.
“The most dangerous part is just getting to wherever we’re going,” Hamaker said.
In addition to supporting soldier companies, the bomb teams also work to clear convoy routes.
When a weapons cache is located, a team arrives with its vehicle, a hardened platform and special equipment, including a robot about the size of child’s wagon. It moves on miniature tanklike tracks. Its remotely operated camera inspects the weapons cache, suspect bomb and surrounding area.
“If it’s just a piece of ordnance,” said Hamaker, “we will transport it to a safe area and dispose of it. If it can’t be safely transported, using a robot we will maneuver it somewhere where we can blow it up.”
About half of all caches found contain improvised bombs “in some state of production,” said Hamaker. They typically employ 57 mm antiaircraft shells or a 155 mm projectile.
“We’ve run into some with small Russian bombs like 100 kilos,” he said. “For the most part we can ID everything, just by sight.”
When called to a site, Hamaker’s team will clear the area and deploy a robot. But the immediate concern is secondary devices to attack any response teams.
“The enemy is watching us do our job so that, just like the IRA (Irish Republican Army) or anybody else who has had to deal with EOD and first responders, now they are looking to get us,” Hamaker said.
To counter that threat, “we just change the way we do business, Hamaker said. “We’re always changing and share that (advice) with the rest of the folks out here.”
Hamaker’s team so far has cleared more than 30 improvised bombs in and around Baghdad.
The job requires a certain type of personality, Hamaker said.
“You have to be an aggressive person; we’re all type A,” he said. “But you have to know when to be aggressive and when to stop, stand back and observe.”
Asked if the bomb threat here ever will be eliminated, Hamaker hesitated before answering. He noted that roadside bombs no longer are used by the IRA in Northern Ireland. “That’s really the only example,” he said. The threat went away when both sides “were able to meet in the middle” and settle their differences.
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