NATIONAL TRAINING CENTER, Calif. -- It's around 1 p.m. in the Mojave Desert. A Stryker armored fighting vehicle tows 1,600 pounds of explosives down a dusty road at the National Training Center Aug. 16. Up ahead is a minefield preventing infantrymen from continuing their mission. Staff Sgt. Eliot Ness and his squad of combat engineers are called in to do what they do best: blow things up.
Ness, a squad leader from the 18th Engineers Company, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, has been a combat engineer for seven years. His primary mission is to clear routes of any hazards on the battlefield so Soldiers can move through safely.
"As engineers we're an all around aspect of everything," said Ness. "We're infantry, we're scouts, we're recon, we're demo, EOD, everything all mixed into one. We can do it all."
Combat engineers use mine clearing land charges to allow an area for the assault forces to get through. Used in Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, this method involves firing a rocket from a Stryker. The nearly ton of explosives are connected to a line attached to the rocket. The explosives are fired and land more than 100 meters away.
"I hope this thing blows first time around," said Ness, seconds away from blowing the charge.
From the mountainside 800 meters away, there is nothing. The charge didn't set of the explosives. The hundreds of mines were not removed by a massive fireball. This left the infantrymen stranded, without safe passage to get to their next objective.
"Misfire, Misfire," comes over the radio, breaking the silence and the anticipation of the Soldiers watching and waiting in the valley.
A cable snapped loose causing the line charge to misfire. The engineers went through a misfire procedure to set up another line to blow the charge.
"Fire in the hole," comes over the radio this time.
The monster explosion rises high into the air. It starts with clouds of dust shooting up, which soon turns into large balls of fire. Ness's Stryker is nowhere to be seen, completely engulfed in the cloud of smoke.
"It's a rush," said Ness, whose Stryker was 62 meters away from the explosion. "It's crazy just to feel that whole shockwave push through and then slowly get covered in a cloud."
Once mines are cleared from a route, a lead Stryker drives the path to ensure the objective is complete. Flags line the edges of the cleared path for other Strykers and the infantry to move past.
"When all the dust settles, there's your breach," said Ness. "Mission accomplished."
Clearing mine fields in Afghanistan will further the commitment to the local populous and provide them and coalition forces safe routes to travel on, said 1st Sgt. Paul Amerson, 18th EN first sergeant.
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