Sustainment troops assist unit in pre-deployment training

By Reginald Rogers
Paraglide

May 26, 2011

	Photos by Reginald Rogers/Paraglide Members of the 104th Troop Command (RAID), which is based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, prepare to clear a room during Level I training May 13. The training is designed to give the unit an idea of real-world situations before its upcoming deployment.

When the Army looks to update its latest equipment, weaponry or policy on how it operates, it’s common for Fort Bragg to receive a call.

Such was the case with recent training conducted by 4th Platoon, 101st Chemical, Biological, Radiation and Nuclear Company May 5. The unit fielded the Army’s new chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear suits and took them through a training series which included clearing a building that was exposed to a hazardous material.

According to 1st Lt. Matt Krivensky, whose platoon conducted the training, the platoon is one of the first that the Army is starting to field in order to combat the growing threat of chemical agents that Soldiers are beginning to see in the War Against Terror.

Krivensky’s platoon converged on Fort Bragg’s Range #60, where it was divided into two teams — a site entry team and a decontamination team. Once the entry teams entered the building wearing the Army’s new total encapsulating suits, members investigated the scene and reported by radio, back to a nearby operations center, whatever they observed inside.

Krivensky explained the importance of his platoon’s training at the range.

“What we’re doing here is, basically, going to help build doctrine for future units that will partake in this type of mission,” he said. “Stuff that we’re doing here is going to be used to mold future Army training, planning and doctrine.”

Krivensky said that although the unit has new equipment, the key to the training was the new detection equipment that was recently fielded for use by the unit. It includes additional hazardous material detection equipment.

“Right now, our troops are in Level A, total encapsulating suits and they’re wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus so that they can maintain and operate in any type of air environment,” Krivensky explained. “Now the SCBA can also be used with another type of suit, which is not as protective, but it allows more mobility.”

He said the reason the troops are wearing the total encapsulating suits is because they were simulating an unknown threat and they wanted to give themselves as much protection as possible. “It will basically protect them from most of all hazards,” Krivensky added.

The SCBA includes an oxygen tank; complete with various monitors and sirens that signal when the wearer’s oxygen level is getting critically low. Krivensky explained that on average, each Soldier should have between 35 and 45 minutes of oxygen once he’s inside the suit. On May 5, the 4th Platoon’s team of Staff Sgt. Samantha Gibson, Pfc. Aaron Averre and Spc. Christopher Bridgett withstood extreme temperatures and conducted operations in the suit for one hour and 11 minutes.

Once inside the building, the team investigated and radioed various reports to Krivensky and other members, who manned the tactical operation center.

According to Gibson, the site entry team leader, an accurate report allowed unit leadership to correctly assess the situation and, if possible, determine what kind of hazardous material had been used.

“When we move in, we have two Soldiers using detectors with different sensors so that we can mark a footprint big enough for our decon line to set up on,” Gibson explained. “Our first priority is to mark that lane all the way to the site. We use different flags to mark the area.

“We marked the site, then we evaluate the target. For example, this was a building and at the same time, we each have different responsibilities,” added Averre, a site entry team member. “I had monitoring equipment and I would continue monitoring, while Staff Sergeant Gibson would call up the characterizations of the buildings.”

Averre pointed out that the team entered each room and identified any hazards. He said the team also had tools and equipment at its disposal that allowed them to provide information back to the CPS as to what the hazard could have been, if there was anything going on inside the building and what it could be collectively interpreted as.

According to Gibson, the team looks for anything that stands out, such as various liquids, laboratory setups, concrete stains, vegetation that may have been killed because of exposure to hazardous materials or any powdery substances.

“We’re looking for anything a terrorist would use against us,” she said. “I report back to the tactical operations center and they’ll also try to draw a sketch of what we’re reporting, so I try to be as descriptive as I can to give them a good picture of the entire room.”

The team said their duties are important to them because they are able to prevent others from being injured or killed due to exposure to chemical hazards.

“We received a lot of unique training over the past nine weeks and we’ve all been to the dismounted recon program and we’ve received additional training since then,” Averre explained.
“It’s nice to have us as a special team to be called in. We’re not necessarily the first in, a lot of times it’s because somebody got sick or someone else was exposed. Then they realize this is some serious stuff that we need to call up to higher and get some specialty people in. So it’s very important for us to identify this for the Soldiers as well as ourselves and to help mitigate any hazards to the environment, surroundings, public, culture and around the area.”

Both Soldiers said they liked working with the new equipment.

“I find it very significant,” Averre said. “It’s nice to have an important role, especially on a specialty team. To work with something that’s not only new to the Army, but new to us as well, keeps people interested and it keeps challenging us, both physically and mentally.”

Information retrieved inside the “contaminated” facility is passed through a mass spectrometer before the team decontaminates. The mass spectrometer gives them a reading of the type of contamination they were exposed to. According to Maj. Jason Tate, the overall officer in charge of the training, all of this must be done before they are decontaminated.

As for the decontamination equipment, Soldiers now use the reactive skin decontamination lotion, which allows Soldiers to do a better and quicker job of decontaminating themselves, explained Tate. The techniques they would use in this situation would be to rub it on to their Level A suits and cut the suits when it’s time to come out of them. So the RSDL would actually neutralize any threat on the outside of the suit to allow them to cut out quicker.

“In the past, we had the M-100 powder, charcoal-type suits,” Tate said. “They worked well for the agents, but as we’ve evolved, the threat has changed, so we have something that’s a little better at neutralizing chemical threats.”

The 4th Platoon consists of 20 troops, each carrying out different responsibilities within their site entry and decontamination teams, but Krivensky added that each of them will be cross-trained to perform any task necessary to maintain the platoon’s proficiency.

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