Jim Blackburn was not the only one to notice a horrifying aspect of the early years of the Afghanistan war – that IEDs were causing around 80% of allied military casualties. However, he was in a position to try to stop it. The year was 2007, and Blackburn, a British Army veteran, was working at EDA in Brussels on capabilities.
What was needed to counter the threat, he believed, was a way to gather as much information as possible about who was making the IEDs, where the components came from, and who was supporting the supply and construction network. If allies knew that, the IED networks could be interdicted, saving the lives of soldiers and civilians alike.
An IED is a homemade bomb that can come in all shapes and sizes, triggered in various ways. Countering IEDs is not only about dealing with a bomb that is already set to detonate, but also about finding and dismantling the groups that make them.
In Afghanistan, EDA was in a position to design a forensic laboratory for deployment, but EU Member States needed to back it, finance it, and provide the personnel. “There was a lot of hesitation. EDA was largely unproven, having been founded just three years before,” Blackburn says. “We at the Agency said, ‘Let’s use EDA’s Operational Budget to fund a one-million-euro exploitation lab and send it to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.’ And we did.”
Thus, the Multi-National Theatre Exploitation Laboratory (MN TEL) was born.
C-IED in EDA initially took off with the ‘Military Search’ activity (see page 32) where the Italians were supportive and helped draw up the concept in Rome, Blackburn recalls. France later offered to lead the MN TEL project in 2010, and the lab was tested in Spain at the NATO Centre of Excellence. Luxembourg would later fly the lab to Kabul, and it was operational by September 2011. In all, personnel from Austria, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, and Sweden took part.
“The lab had an immediate impact, supporting the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan National forces,” Blackburn says. “The Netherlands then approached the EDA to ensure the lab became more permanent, with expertise that would endure.”
In the pine trees of Soesterberg
Fast-forward to today, and the EDA project that was once called MN TEL is now permanent. Located in a joint training facility amid the pine trees of Soesterberg in the Netherlands, and comprising two deployable laboratories equipped with tools such as a Rapid DNA machine, the Joint Deployable Exploitation and Analysis Laboratory (JDEAL) has trained over 900 personnel from 14 EU Member States. JDEAL began operating in mid-2014.
If the lab’s name sounds off-putting, it should not be. Exploitation, also known as technical exploitation, refers to the recording and analysis of IEDs. Commander JDEAL Robert Breen, a major now at the Dutch Ministry of Defence, says: “This can be in support of military intelligence and even in support of battlefield evidence. The project is not limited to the investigation of IEDs. As the world changes, JDEAL is able to execute technical exploitation in a broader scope. Not only forensics but also, documentation, chemicals, electronics, media and UAV exploitation.”
Still managed by EDA and led by the Netherlands, JDEAL also brings together Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden – as well as Norway. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the NATO Counter-IED Centre of Excellence have also sent observers during the project’s lifetime. The facility can be deployed with five days’ notice, either as a container or a tent, depending on field conditions.
Lab to Ukraine, ‘Military Search’
Now, the facility and its expertise may have a wider application. The Netherlands is donating one of the deployable laboratories to Ukraine and will partly finance the cost of its replacement, ensuring that two laboratories remain operational for the Member States.
What’s more, JDEAL is not the only EDA project focused on counter-IED. Through the Military Search project (MSCB), various Member States learn from each other’s best practice and experience, and synchronise their efforts to search and detect IEDs – the first step to be able to neutralise and investigate them.
Through its centre in Vienna, the EDA-managed European Centre for Manual Neutralisation Capabilities (ECMAN) also trains personnel from Member States to manually defuse highly-complex IEDs when necessary. It is one of the most mentally and technically challenging jobs performed by anyone in the armed forces.