During my stay on Camp Bondsteel, one of the missions I was given was to take my team up to various hilltops which looked like they might be good spots to put a communications site. I'd go over the map and find 5 or so sites and write down their grid coordinates. Then I would go over to the Mine Action Center and check the area to see if it was okay mine-wise to check out. One site which MAJ Birch really wanted me to check out was not cleared of mines so I hooked up with a 1LT in the engineer unit on Bondsteel and one cold and dark morning myself and SPC Rainey climbed into the back of one of their APC's and headed up to the hilltop. Here are a few pictures I took while we were out on this mission. We never did use that hilltop, but it was neat.
Here we are at the site we were going to clear.
SPC Rainey looking up from the top hatch of the APC.
There are the engineer troops getting the robots
ready to go up and clear out the hilltop.
There they go. Basically those robots are sent up to the area to be
cleared and they flail around a bunch of chains which will set off
any mines. It could be an expensive way to clear out an area of
mines, but it's surely cheaper than training another soldier!
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