Eighteen soldiers dead. Sixty-eight wounded. And Hideshi Sasaki was growing frustrated. He was command sergeant major of the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Stationed smack in the center of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle in 2004 and 2005, the 1-506th was battered by improvised explosive devices.

The casualties were bad enough, but what also troubled Sasaki was the Army’s approach to counter-IED training. There was the usual emphasis on the devices: how bombs were made, how to spot the telltale signs of an IED planted in concrete or sand. “But most of the time that you see those things, it was too late,” Sasaki recalled.

Sasaki realized that IEDs weren’t just bombs. They were mechanical ambushes. Ambushes, as in infantry tactics, the kind he learned about in Ranger school. It dawned on Sasaki that soldiers needed to understand the terrain as the insurgents saw it. “The insurgents give a great thought to detailed terrain analysis,” he said. “The locations are always, always well-thought-out.”

If U.S. soldiers could analyze the terrain as the insurgents did and identify a likely IED because that’s where the Americans themselves would site an ambush, then the newest IED countermeasure would be the human mind, far superior to any radio jammer or minesweeping vehicle. Sasaki taught this method of thinking to his unit. There were no more deaths from IEDs, and the number of wounded plunged by half.

When Sasaki became a contractor at the Center of Excellence at the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), he brought his idea of focusing on the insurgents, not the bombs. And in partnership with some Hollywood special-effects wizards, he has developed a multimedia counter-IED trainer that may be the only one of its kind.

The Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Trainer (MCIT) was developed — based on Sasaki’s concept — by the Institute for Creative Technology (ICT) at the University of Southern California, which taps Hollywood expertise for Pentagon projects. MCIT demonstration systems have been set up at Fort Campbell, Ky.; Camp Pendleton, Calif.; and Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, Miss. Each MCIT costs about $1.8 million.

Todd Richmond, ICT’s project manager for the training system, said MCIT is designed to be a cognitive trainer.

“We’re not trying to give them a laundry list of facts to remember. It’s anti-PowerPoint. We’re giving them a framework for understanding ambush and IED attacks,” he said.

MCIT consists of four 40-foot-long Conex boxes. Groups of up to 10 soldiers work their way from trailer to trailer. “It’s self-paced,” Richmond said. “There are no proctors involved. For the entire system, you only need one field service representative, and all he does is start and stop the game simulation.”

It takes about 90 minutes to pass through all four trailers, with MCIT able to train about a hundred soldiers a day.

Training odyssey

The MCIT odyssey begins in Trailer 1, where trainees are introduced to an insurgent character who explains “that he wants to blow them up and how he’s going to do it,” Richmond said. Then comes a video of a soldier or Marine — depending on the audience — who describes his experiences encountering IEDs on patrol. “His demeanor changes as he goes from video to video,” Richmond said. “He gets more experienced. He gets more competent.”

Trailer 1 ends with a three-minute group quiz on a touch screen. Soldiers are tested on attention to detail rather than memorizing facts, Richmond said.

“What was the color of the insurgents’ clothing? How many propane tanks were in the environment?” he said. “We’re not giving them a laundry list of TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures], like telling them that the insurgents are putting bombs in dogs. If you tell a soldier that, he is going to be looking for bombs in dogs. And he’s going to miss the cameraman that’s taping him.”

Trailer 2 is outfitted to resemble a bomb maker’s residence, complete with dark curtains on the windows, rubber gloves and a work table with IED components. And there are more videos. “They’re from the insurgent who thinks you’re his nephew, and these are the videos he’s left to teach you to be the next-generation bomb maker,” Richmond said.

The insurgent explains to his nephew the tricks of an IED ambush, such as the need to record the attack on video and note the behavior of the troops. “We’re not showing them how to make an IED,” Richmond said. “But if they’re walking through a residence and they see a washing machine timer sitting on a table, and there’s no washing machine around, we want them to note that.”

Trailer 3 focuses on teaching when to use Counter Radio-controlled IED Electronic Warfare signal-jamming devices. “We don’t get into details,” Richmond said. “We just want them to know that you have to turn it on when you transit outside the wire, and turn it off when you come back inside.” Soldiers are also given a mission brief for Trailer 4.

Trailer 4 is the grand finale where they put what they have learned into practice. Inside are two mock Humvees, each with a driver, commander and a gunner with a .50-caliber machine gun. It sounds almost like other convoy trainers, but MCIT has a twist. The soldiers don’t fight against scripted computer-generated forces. They fight each other. Players split into two groups in each 15-minute scenario. One will man the Humvees and the other will be insurgents. Each soldier will play in the Blue Force twice, and the Red Force insurgents once. “They think they are training,” Sasaki said, who is senior TTP training manager at JIEDDO’s Center of Excellence. “Actually, they’re a training aid.”

A four-man Red Cell will have an IED triggerman, spotter, cameraman and a security member armed with an rocket-propelled grenade launcher. When they plan their ambush, they use a touch screen with a map of the terrain marked with potential attack points. When they touch a point, the screen zooms down to ground level and the insurgents can scroll around for different views.

“The teaching point here is that we’re trying to get them to understand that terrain is a weapon,” Richmond said. “So they’re looking for military crests, culverts, blind rises, blind turns to plant the device.”

The enemy’s view

Playing the insurgent side is the most instructive. It’s also the most immersive. “They are totally immersed because it is an engaging game,” Richmond said. “They want to beat their buddies. They take it really seriously. They set up pretty diabolical ambushes.”

MCIT offers a smorgasbord of options for the discriminating insurgent. IEDs come in four varieties: homemade explosive, 152-millimeter artillery round, triple-stacked mines and explosively formed penetrator. There are also four command detonators to choose from: command wire, radio control, passive infrared or victim-activated.

“They carry out a complex attack and think like the bad guys,” Richmond said. “What are the terrain features for placing our device? Where do we put our guys? My spotter needs a line of sight and he needs markers. The triggerman has to be able to see when to trigger. My security guy has to be in a position so when the bomb goes off, he can provide secondary fire. Or, they can do an RPG attack first and the IED second. The beauty of this not being computer-based is that these 18-year-old kids are all gamers. They understand pretty well how to conduct an ambush.”

MCIT gets a thumbs-up from Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, who have used it at Camp Pendleton. “Our Marines get wrapped around the axle looking for the IED,” said Sgt. Alexander Wilterdink. “This helps break us out of the box, looking for the different components of the terrorist cell like the triggerman, or the camera guy that we usually forget about.”

Wilterdink thinks MCIT’s video clips were nice window-dressing, but not vital. He got more from watching and handling the physical props. He also found the touch-screen quizzes to be valuable for retaining the lessons. Others enjoyed the self-paced instruction, and much preferred the chance to train in small groups instead of a classroom with 50 students.

Lance Cpl. Gino Vieira said the team-on-team training simulation on the end was good.

“You have to be that much more vigilant,” he said. “Guys who play the video games know what to look for in that kind of environment. When you’re playing against a human opponent, and you’re in your own vehicle using your own [rules of engagement], it’s as real as it gets.”