Tracker Mindset for Explosive Device Emplacement Indicator Detection

1. What they did

Most improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that Soldiers find are spotted with the naked eye. While studying training for a handheld landmine detector, the authors noticed that operators listened so closely to the detector that they missed what they could see: the marks left by whoever laid the mine. Trackers, on the other hand, read exactly these traces. The authors asked whether a short course in a “tracker mindset” could help Soldiers notice and interpret the signs left when a device is put in the ground.

• Background. The authors drew on research into how people see and search (sensing, perceiving and interpreting, and how practice makes searching automatic), on earlier work with combat trackers, and on a 2007 visit to Israel, where they met military and police trackers and commanders (appendix A).
• The course. They built a two-day course of about 8 hours: classroom lessons on the eye and brain and on the basics of tracking and spoor interpretation, then hands-on work in a “spoor pit”, a sand volleyball court at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, raked smooth and divided into eight cells.
• The Soldiers. Twenty-eight Soldier volunteers, in two groups, took part. Most were engineers; their average age was 27. Twenty-two had never personally found an IED.
• The tests. Before and after the course, each Soldier took three tests: a written knowledge test, a photo test (written descriptions of five projected photos of footprints, 2 minutes each) and a spoor pit test (written descriptions of five staged scenes, 2 minutes each, such as someone sitting down, people meeting, burying a container, or dragging one). Three scorers marked the photo and spoor pit tests with a rubric.
• Feedback. Each course ended with an after action review, in discussion and in writing.

2. What they found

Test scores

• Knowledge test: average scores rose from 15.3 to 43.5 points (out of 92), an improvement of 185%.
• Photo test: average scores rose from 17.8 to 24.0, an improvement of 35%.
• Spoor pit test: average scores rose from 28.2 to 36.0, an improvement of 28%.
• All three improvements were statistically significant.

What the Soldiers said

• Overall they were satisfied, and liked the hands-on exercises best, especially staging their own scenes for the class to interpret.
• Common requests were a longer course (11 comments), more IED-specific indicators (11), more “dirt time” (9), and more surfaces and detail, such as grass, gravel, light angles and cover and concealment (9).
• The photos were challenging because they lacked depth, and Soldiers were split on whether to use more or fewer of them.
• Several said the course gave them a new way of looking at the ground. During training the Soldiers showed a fast-growing ability to piece marks together into a story and to ignore marks with little meaning.

From the Israel visit (appendix A)

• In the Israeli units visited, every unit went out with at least one tracker from the area, and trackers went first.
• The commanders saw tracking and bomb detection as the same skill. They stressed motivation, love of the job, and intimate knowledge of the terrain, climate and local people, and said tracking only works when commanders fully accept it.

3. What they concluded

• Even a short course improved Soldiers’ ability to detect and interpret signs on the ground, and the authors judge the training worth conducting as “hip pocket” training for small unit leaders.
• They note the limits: better scores are expected on tests seen before, the course did not measure detection of real IEDs, and 8 hours covers only the basics. Most tracking courses last 40 to 80 hours, and real skill comes only from many hours in the field.
• The biggest change may have been in how the Soldiers thought about searching, which is hard to measure.
• Recommendations: add more IED-related and other indicators, use aids such as flour and artificial light, teach terminology, the time-shadow effect, viewing angle and aging in more depth, use a wider range of photos and scenarios, and consider footprint diagrams, recording techniques, the Erikson technique for working out the order of events, and binoculars. “Overall, practice!”

4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking was the subject of the training. Soldiers learned to read human footprints (impact point, foot roll, heel strike, toe dig, stride, straddle, pitch, pressure and rhythm), hand, knee and fabric marks, tool marks (shovels, picks, buckets, rucksacks), drag marks, and the order in which tracks were laid. They practised positioning themselves against the sun or a flashlight or signal mirror, and tried binoculars and coloured glasses. A quiz with nine sets of footprints asked them to sort out contamination: how many people passed, who was first and last, and who walked pigeon-toed, “duck” walked (pronated) or had an injured leg. No trailing was taught or tested: the course worked with spoor at single sites.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. The trainees were novices, and the instructors’ tracking qualifications are not described. The Israel trip report mentions travelling with “a world renowned, expert tracker” who is not named. The photo and spoor pit answers were marked by three scorers using a rubric the authors wrote.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• A purpose-built spoor pit: a sand volleyball court, weeded, tilled, raked and smoothed with a board, divided into eight cells of about 12.5 by 13.5 feet.
• A full curriculum in the appendices: lecture notes on vision and perception, the footprint quiz, the knowledge test, and annotated photos with scoring rubrics for every test scene.
• Practical rules of thumb for searchers: the eye sees fine detail only in about a dime-sized area at 5 feet, and needs 2 to 3 seconds of dwell time on a spot.