I’ve been thinking about the training of bomb technicians to deal with IEDs quite a lot of late. One of my oldest friends is currently responsible for such training in the British military and having myself undergone such training in the past (way past!), and been a “customer” employing people from that training regime, and now for the last ten years involved in designing and delivering training for bomb technicians in many countries around the world, not surprisingly I have some views, but I also have gaps in my knowledge I’m trying to fill. I intend to air some aspects of what I’m finding over the coming weeks.
Here’s some thoughts for starters:
- Fundamentally there are quite a few aspects and many different approaches to such training. If truth be told the thinking behind the design of such training is rarely done, in my opinion at the appropriate depth, and those responsible for policy often don’t understand all the complex issues. Sweeping statement but I think I can back that up.
- I think training to be a counter-terrorist bomb tech is a very difficult challenge. To deal with the problem of defusing an IED is not a simple task. There are technical challenges, command and leadership challenges, decision making processes, intelligence requirements, knowledge issues, potentially significant stress and pressure, operationally complex coordinating to be done, questioning and interrogation techniques, and the very fact that it is in the interest of your enemy to make the task as damned difficult as he can and hide stuff from you. And the penalty of getting any of those wrong is your life, and maybe others too.
- There are some really interesting psychological issues that are rarely addressed in bomb technician training, about how humans make decisions, about how some information is processed by “instinct” or gut feel and how some data is processed by reasoning. And the two often contradict – but I’m not aware of any training course in the world that addresses those psychological issues up front with students. I’m reading a fascinating book by Dan Gardner called “Risk” about how humans process information regarding risk that is giving me some new insights that I’ll post in coming days. As a heads up, it’s clear that the psychological process of assessing risk is often flawed.
- I’ve seen some remarkably competent, consistent bomb technicians, and in truth some awfully consistent bad ones. I can’t always predict which ones will be which before a training course starts. But I’d like to. I’ve also seen some really good ones, who do make mistakes. For the record, I was a long way from being the best.
- In many parts of the world such a training course is “attendance” – no real assessment or pass or fail criteria are applied – I have a problem with that. In other parts of the world there are pass and fail criteria, but this gives rise to a few difficult and thorny issues – firstly the training organisation are put under huge pressure when they are not “passing enough”, and secondly, the complexity of the assessment in the end usually comes down to an objective assessment with no really valid metrics.
I’ll be returning to this subject in more detail in coming days – feel free to pile in with comments now.