Positivity: “Buffalo Bill” Detects IEDs
Keeping bombs (”Improvised Explosive Devices” or IEDs) from going off IS good news, right?
From the Army Times:
Buffalo ‘Bill’ detects IEDs, saves lives
BAGHDAD — The sign seemed innocent enough: A small, squarish box, perhaps two feet on each side, hanging from an overpass above the highway that runs to the west of Baghdad International Airport.
Innocent except that nearly all the soldiers from C Company, 648th Engineering Battalion, were absolutely convinced it had not been there an hour or so before when they’d passed under this same bridge.
It was time for Spc. Richard Bell to pilot his unusual vehicle into place. The Buffalo — more than 20 tons of armor and protective glass — climbed a ramp to the overpass, where Spc. Johnnie Perkins extended the vehicle’s robotic arm to tear the sign loose from the rope lashing it to the bridge.
Once on the highway below, Perkins poked the arm’s long metal claw through the signs plastic cover, shook things around a bit … and revealed a 155mm artillery shell, the Iraqi insurgent’s improvised explosive of choice.
“Those [expletive] are hanging stuff over our heads now!†muttered Staff Sgt. James McMillan as Perkins carefully scraped the crude detonator away from the shell.
“I knew that didn’t look right,†Bell said a moment later as he steered the Buffalo back down Main Supply Route Tampa, leaving the defanged bomb for explosive ordnance disposal troops to handle.
