a mobilized year

While I’m an infantry officer part of a light infantry battalion, our battalion’s current primary mission is not a typical infantry mission.

It shouldn’t come to much of a surprise that the preferred method for the AIF of striking against coalition forces is through the use of IEDs. Sometimes they’re delivered through tires, other times through vehicles or animal carcasses and yet at other times strapped to a person. It is also not uncommon to have IEDs used in conjunction with small arms fire. To counter against IEDs, the Army is tapping some combat arms units (e.g., infantry, cavalry, armor and field artillery) to guard/escort the transport of personnel, equipment, and supplies. That’s where my unit currently falls in.

Our missions run from the southern tip of Iraq in Safwan to all throughout the country (including north of Mosul). The unit we just replaced logged in over 5 million miles on Iraqi roads this last year. While our primary focus is to guard against IEDs and small arms and RPG fires, another role we play is to protect against vehicle hijackings (which you don’t hear much about in the states). Most of the vehicle hijackings and hijacking attempts are conducted by criminal elements as opposed to terrorist groups.

With our mentality and aggressiveness as a light infantry battalion, coupled with the training that we’ve had to support our primary mission, I think we’re more than ready for this mission. We had a good transition with the unit we replaced and we’re doing a great job with the “interactions” we’ve run into thus far.

While convoy security/escorting is currently our primary mission, we fulfill a few other missions as well. I’ll elaborate on those when I can in up-coming weeks.