Commanders’ and Staff Handbook for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices (C-IED) Writing Session

From 18-20 November 2019, the C-IED COE hosted the first review and writing session to revise the Commanders’ and Staff Handbook for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices (C-IED). The group discussed and made recommendations to 70 Staff Functions contributing to C-IED, along with the specified task list and those individual purposes that align with each of the staff tasks.

The group also discussed the overall structure of the handbook. This included adding an Annex to capture the entire C-IED Enablers and their roles and functions within the overall C-IED approach, and breaking the handbook into a Planning and Execution Phase. Furthermore, additional acronyms and definitions were captured to fulfill C-IED related terminology.

Once the writing group and external participant changes have been made, the handbook will be redistributed throughout the community of interest and consolidated again in preparation for the next writing session. The tentative location and date for the next writing session is in Crete, Greece from 25-29 May 2020.

9th NATO HUMINT Best Practices/Lessons Learned Community of Interest Workshop

The CIED COE participated in the 9th NATO HUMINT Best Practices/Lessons Learned Community of Interest Workshop that took place on 22-23 OCT 2019 in the NATO HUMINT CoE premises. J2X representatives from different NATO structures, Nations and cross domain Centres of Excellence attended the workshop. The CIED COE supported the event providing a presentation regarding CIED and HUMINT.

CLOCKWORK ORANGE 2019 Exercise

From October 28th to November 8th Nato C-IED Center of Excellence supported the Royal Dutch Forces with subject matter expertise to their multinational training event named CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The 2019 iteration included units from USA, Nederland, Germany and Sweden. The focus of the event was technical exploitation and the final step in the development of the 108th Technical Exploitation Intelligence Company as a part of the Joint ISTAR battalion in the Dutch forces. Along with the Dutch efforts US Army Europe tested their concept with a soldier-manned equivalent to a level 2 exploitation facility with impressing results.

The training audience was presented to various objectives to exploit, testing their ability to adapt to the situation and to the threat. Several of the tasks were conducted by integrated units from different nations aiming to create a learning environment and to provide opportunities for cross-national training. The 2019 CLOCKWORK ORANGE included a complete set of technical exploitation capabilities enabling the participating units to follow the exploitation chain from collection to dissemination of the final report. The scenario challenged the training audience with a transition from hybrid tactics to full combat against a fictitious peer to peer adversary. This transition fits right into the NATO alliance focus area and was the first step into the future of technical exploitation in a hybrid warfare scenario and was very appreciated by the participating nations.

Ex Ardent Defender 2019

C-IED CoE participated to the exercise Ardent Defender 2019 (EX AD 19) with two members of the Center from 30th Sep to 17 Oct 2019. EX AD series of exercises is an annual international exercise planned, organized and executed by the Canadian Joint Counter Explosive Task Force (CAN JCET TF). The main objective is to exercise the complete Cycle of Exploitation in a Joint Inter-Agency Multi-National Public (JIMP) environment in order to manage an emerging complex threat. This year apart from focusing on the exploitation cycle and the holistic approach of the IED problem, our C-IED CoE undertook the responsibility to mentor a Defense Capacity Building Plan (DCB Plan) for the fictitious “Host Nation of Atropia” as one of the three main Lines of Effort (LoE) during the exercise.