Standing Well Back

EOD Equipment

Things you can’t do in a bomb suit.

Well, you see, I try and make the titles grab attention. Sorry. This post is another in the “cognitive psychology” theme.   I’m becoming more certain that both “System 1” cognition, developed by experience and training, and System 2 cognition, careful slower pace thought, have key roles to play. At certain times in certain operations one or other is more important. In high intensity, high tempo operations, System 1 must be optimized – it is optimized by training and by experience and experience of others can help in developing appropriate SOPs  and the monitoring of “system 1 “ EOD activities by experienced commanders/ mentors.

When a System 1 approach fails or the nature of the IED is unknown, a System 2 approach is needed. It’s at this point that I think my concern is focused, because I have seen operators struggle at this point and probably did struggle myself too on occasions.  I really think the mind fools itself at this point, potentially, and it’s hard to switch from “One” to “Two” and then be certain you have switched.  Also on an operation it’s difficult to develop the optimal circumstances such that your mind can “switch”.  An example:

Here are some simple System 1 examples:

2+ 2 = ?

Bread and ?

Your answers are all instinctive, you don’t need to think about it.  Let me now give you what is likely a System 2 problem:

23 x 17 = ?

Ok you have to think about that but most of us (!) could probably do that in our heads – it might take 10 or 20 seconds. That’s your system 2 working.

Now , an experiment. Stand up from your desk, and start jogging on the spot reasonably vigorously. After ten seconds try and compute 31 x 27 in your head, while jogging. Do it now.

OK so I bet you had to stop jogging to do it. This demonstrates that you physically cannot do “System 2” thinking while actively physically engaged in something else.  This means you cannot do “System 2” threat assessments while in a bomb suit working towards a suspect IED, carrying tools, weapons and clearing your way working on absorbing your surrounding environment. You can only do System 2 threat assessments in the ease and comfort of your ICP, without other distractions.  I think that’s quite important. If you think you can do System 2 threat assessments while working in your EOD suit you are fooling yourself, and the mind is easily fooled. Interestingly there is a physiological activity that can be spotted when the brain is engaged in “System 2” and that is a dilation of the pupils, but that’s not practical to monitor.  I’m also finding some interesting other hints – System 2 is also adversely affected, directly, by low blood sugar levels.

So for now, here is what I recommend:

A.  Discipline yourself to encourage “System 2” analysis if the task demands it. It is probably demanded if you do not know the nature of the IED or if an SOP  action fails to have the desired effect or if something unexpected occurs.

B. Be “self aware” of the likelihood that you will fool yourself  and actually use System 1 thinking when you think you are doing System 2. Know that if you are in your bomb suit down range you CANNOT be doing System 2. If you find something unexpected return to the ICP to think about it. A personal bug bear now which is comms while in a bomb suit. I abhor this as it simply doesn’t help, it extends the time of the operator is in the danger zone, and if the operator is providing commentary on what he is seeing HE or SHE IS NOT THINKING. Every time I see this used, I never see the value, it simply is pointless, dangerous effort.

C. Maximize your System 2 potential by finding time and space in your ICP , uninterrupted by other things such as comms, equipment prep etc. Other people do that , not because it is not important but because it is important that the operator has time to think. If an operator is preparing equipment, that’s a bad sign.

D. Commanders, recognise the adverse effect of fatigue on system 2 thinking. There is clinical evidence to show the consequences of fatigue on this aspect of cognitive performance.

E. Eat a bar of chocolate on your way to a task to keep your blood sugar level up. (!)

So …nothing startling there for many but perhaps some reinforcement of current drills, and some reasons why some current drills work. But more to come which I think will be new techniques to encourage System 2 cognitive processes where there are some seeds of ideas developing in my little head…

EOD Psychology

EOD Psychology – Playing Doctors and Nurses

OK, I’m beginning to develop more detailed thoughts now as I get into Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”.  I’d like to explore one aspect now. Firstly thanks to those engaging with me on a couple of linked-in forums on this. Secondly I want to steal an idea my friend Andy Gibson told me about and merge it with something I’m getting from Kahneman.  It is an analogy to “types” of EOD activity and the skills sets needed, which I think match the System 1/System 2.

The analogy is this.  There are two sorts of EOD response as there are two sorts of medical response.  In the medical world a hugely important role is played by paramedics and nurses. They either go to scenes of accidents and have to make rapid decisions usually based on SOPs, or they are applying straightforward diagnostic skills routinely to patients.  Then there are the doctors, surgeons and diagnosticians who play a different medical role. They diagnose treat and operate when the level of “judgment” allows and requires a different skill set. At an accident the challenge is keeping the accident victim alive “now” for the next few minutes and huge skill is needed to do that. But a patient suffering an exotic unknown tropical; illness or a complex brain tumour needs different skill sets applied to the problem in a different time frame.  So. I’m wondering are these examples of System 1 (the nurse/paramedic) and System 2, the surgeon/diagnostician?

And in EOD I think the System 1 Nurse/paramedic style operation exists. This might be assault IED in high tempo operations, or routine predictable  SOP controlled mine clearance.   And the System 2 operation exists for the EOD equivalent of the surgeon/diagnostician.  Here the IED may need exotic techniques to render safe, or the nature of the IED may demand a significant diagnostic process, and there is time to undertake that.  The implications are that we need to recognise the boundaries and sometimes that’s really difficult.  There is also an important question this raises – should we have different people to conduct System 1 and System 2 tasks or do we train people to cross the boundaries.

A quick aside. One of the diagnostic tool sets for System 2 EOD is a thing called “Tactical Design Analysis” or TDA.  It’s also a skill set used in incident investigation by WIT teams and the like. I am a huge proponent of TDA, but you know what, I’ve never seen it taught systematically on any EOD training course, ever in the world, and one of my few claims is that I’ve knocked around the EOD training world quite extensively.

I’d also like to make a little clearer that these concepts of System 1 and System 2 are not new  – indeed I discussed them on this blog a couple of years ago. But what Kahneman is saying is that sometimes we fool ourselves that we are using System 2 when we are in fact relying on System 1. It’s that error, or bias that I think is dangerous for bomb techs.

I think (but I’m not yet sure and I need to think some more) that there are distinctive patterns when this fault occurs, and I hope to be able to understand those patterns better and develop some suggested strategies for dealing with it. I don’t want to big this up into the biggest question facing EOD operators – it’s not. But looking back at my experience of EOD – as a student, as an operator, as a commander and as a trainer, and most importantly as a developer of technical and operational procedures I’ve always had a concern and difficulty myself at this System 1/ System 2 interface, and I think that it would benefit from some hard thought.

EOD Psychology

EOD Operators are not rational

OK, another provocative title. I’m still looking hard at Bomb Squad psychology to understand better how EOD operators assess situations and make decisions in the heady atmosphere of an incident command post/control post. It’s the cognitive processes that I’m focusing on.  The fundamental starting point is that an EOD operation is a puzzle, where the nature of the problem and its solution are not always clear. I fully accept that in many EOD operations the problem and the solution are indeed clear… but it’s when these are not obvious that the challenge is encountered.

My current reading is Daniel Kahneman’s  very excellent “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I want time to think slowly about this myself, as some of the concepts are a bit mind-blowing, so again I’ll drip feed some thoughts in coming weeks. Suffice to say Kahneman is  a world leading psychologist and Nobel prize winner. Firstly he disrupts what I suspect is the common thinking behind many EOD training systems – that the operator is what psychologists call a “rational agent”.  This concept suggests that people behave like systematically, making entirely rational, evidence-based algorithmic decisions and the only challenge is to train them to utilize the correct algorithm.  Kahneman points out that this is not the case and makes a convincing argument.  People make systematic mistakes and non-logical decisions consistently.  In most lives this doesn’t really matter (and he talks extensively about the economic world), but in EOD the consequences of this are serious.

So Kahneman builds a new model for our cognitive processes and it’s a model that I think is leading me to some specifics as far as EOD is concerned. In broad outline (he says) there are two systems we use as cognitive processes:

System 1 – This all about how we use instinct based on little data (Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”) . It is automatic and effortless, and is the product of retained memory and learned patterns of association. It’s all about snap judgments. Sometimes we call it intuition.  But we are not good at telling whether it is right or not – if our intuition is right once, we tell ourselves we have “good intuition” and trust our gut every time after that – which in the vernacular is boll0x.  Find me one person in the world who doesn’t think they have good intuition.  Going back to my earlier posts, I think System 1 tries to fit the limited facts into a “narrative “ – (any narrative) and wings it from there.

System 2 – This is the difficult one. It considers, evaluates and reasons. Importantly for us,in the EOD context, it needs time, and it needs effort.  The key point Kahneman makes is that we believe we are using System 2 when we make our threat assessment and plan our RSP… but actually more often than not we are using System 1…. And that’s dangerous because that way makes assumptions on the basis that the narrative “sounds right” (see earlier blogs).  So the crucial piece, perhaps, is to “recognise” a System 1 decision when the operator is taking that decision and encourage a System 2 approach. I’m beginning to see some specific techniques that an EOD operator might use to do this and how it might be implemented in training.

Now, System 1 always functions no matter how little data we have. I think as EOD operators we “cage” System 1 with some firm SOPs that stop it getting to out of hand. So, for example, within the British community, the SOPs of “one man risk”, “as few approaches as possible”, “always take positive EOD action”, “always have an EOD weapon on hand on a manual approach” cage and constrain some of the weaknesses of System 1 and encourage good practice.  System 2 requires willpower, effort and discipline.  It’s hard work, intellectually and most importantly it requires time.  As someone famous (Edison, I seem to recall )once said – “There seems to be no limit to which some men will go to avoid the labor of thinking”  and Mark Twain said “ Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it”.

I’m intrigued that the time factor is so crucial for System 2, and I wonder if the tempo of EOD operations in Afghanistan is such that the time for a System 2 approach is constrained. I suspect so.  As an aside I’m still a little haunted by some hand-written notes I once read about an EOD operator who died in the 1970s.  The operator was a youngish Captain with a good track record of IED disposal in an intense operational theatre. But the tempo of operations increased and the operator was clearly tired.  His boss when writing in a small innocuous exercise book, as he had dozens of times before about the performance of operators on their “tour”, was simply bewildered why this experienced operator was taking the actions he was taking when the device exploded blowing him across a field, dead. I’m not haunted by the operator, who I never knew, I’m haunted by the desperate words that his OC used as he expressed his lack of understanding as to the actions this man had chosen.

I’m also intrigued by the implication to high intensity tactical operations. The infantry solder, boots on the ground, fights a System 1 battle, while the commander and staff officers fight a System 2 battle…and the EOD operator has to fit his actions with both, depending on the circumstances and I think that causes some dynamic tension that EOD operators have to be trained to cope with.

In future posts I hope to start to develop some possible EOD “specifics” from this System 1/System 2 cognitive process which I’d like to share or have shot down by readers. 

1830-1840

Electrically Initiated Command Wire Devices – the first?

In an earlier post I suggested that the first electrical command wire initiated device appeared in the American Civil War. This was incorrect, as I believe the truth is that such things were first developed by the Russians in the 1830s as electrically initiated sea mines  and later used in the Crimean war by the Russians  .  A “forgotten theatre” of that war was a series of naval engagement in the Baltic as the British and its allies blockaded Russian ports. The Russians protected their ports with ingenious improvised sea mines and a number of these were electrically initiated.

These first “galvanic” initiated mines were developed by Engineer-General Karl Shilder, who was a senior engineer in the Russian Navy – and he had a chance encounter with Alfred Nobel’s father, Immanuel Nobel in the late 1830s.  Immanuel Nobel had developed the concept of a rubber backpack containing explosives for use by the military as a contact initiated explosive mine. He failed to gain interest from the Swedish military so took his ideas to the Russians.  Shilder was on a committee set up by the Tsar to investigate electrically initiated mines. Nobel suggested his contact mine as an alternative and subsequently the idea was presented and demonstrated to the Tsar who rewarded Nobel with 3000 Roubles.  Nobel set up a facility to develop the concepts further and succeeded in a trial in 1842 to blow up and sink a three-masted ship – gaining a further substantial financial prize from the Russian government.

When the Crimean war began Nobel’s mines and other command-initiated devices were used extensively on land and sea, and in particular to protect the Russian naval port of Kronsdtadt on an island in the approaches to St Petersburg.  A British operation to recover and exploit this new foreign technology was mounted and Russian mines was recovered and carefully tested.   Other British attempts to exploit the Russian technology were less successful – a number of senior British naval officers, including the commander, Admiral Dundas were badly wounded when examining recovered Russian devices.  Here’s a diagram of a Russian contact mine, a description of some early naval EOD actions, technical device exploitation and a fascinating account of the stupidity of senior officers, twice in one day – all in one:

They are made cone-shaped of strong zinc, about two feet deep, and fifteen inches wide at top. The bottom holds the powder, about eight pounds; the top is full of air, to keep it up; a strong tube (B B B) goes through the top, and reaches the powder; a small tube about the size of a lead pencil is hung in the centre of the large one (D D) – it pivots on its centre; and fixed in the bottom of the large tube, in the little chamber of priming-powder (C), is a small glass tube (+), sticking up into the bottom of the small tube. You will see that if anything pushes the upper end of the small tube on one side, as I have tried to show in figure 2, as it is pivoted in the centre, it must break off the glass tube, which is filled with some ignitible stuff, which fires the priming-powder (C), and of course explodes the machine. Now the two thin tubes of iron on the top (A A) slide to and fro, out are kept away from the tubes by slight springs. On being touched by a ship’s side, or even pressed with a finger, they shove the small tube aside, as in figure 2, and explode the machine. How any were hauled into boats without exploding seems marvellous; but some lost their tubes when canted up to be hauled in; others had been put down with caps on the tops, which prevent their going off. These ought to have been removed; but the parties putting them down had been so afraid of them, they had preferred leaving them safe for us to risking removing the caps themselves. I don’t know what the Grand Duke will say if he knows this! Admiral Seymour and Hall got one up, and hauled it over the bows of the gig. How the little slides were not touched is wonderful. It was then passed aft; and the master of the fleet joining them, they, thinking it was damaged with wet, got discussing the way to set it off. Stokes touched the slide, shoved the tube a little on one side, but evidently not enough to break the glass tube. They then took it to Admiral Dundas, and again they all played with it; and Admiral Seymour took it to his ship, and on the poop had the officers round it examining it. Hall, being in the act of hoisting a second one, was on the quarter-deck. Some of the officers remarked on the danger of its going off, and Admiral Seymour said, ‘Oh no; this is the way it would go off,’ and shoved the slide in with his finger, as he had seen Stokes do it. It instantly exploded, knocking down every one round it. As Hall looked round he saw the captain of marines, a son of Sir John Louis, carried down the ladder, with every bit of clothes burnt off him and covered with blood. He then heard, ‘The admiral is killed.’ The latter was lying insensible, his face covered with blood; but he soon recovered, though very seriously injured in one eye and the head. The poor captain of marines had pieces of the machine in his legs, besides the burns. Pierce, the flag-lieutenant, much hurt, a piece of iron going through the peak of his cap, and knocking it into the mizzen-top, but not touching his head; a young volunteer also. The signalman holding it up at the time not very much hurt, though burnt; and one lieutenant and the chaplain, though next to Admiral Seymour and close to it, only had their hair singed, and were not hurt at all. Two or three men also slightly wounded. It is a wonderful escape, for pieces of it flew down the main hatchway; and we know that the Russians getting one into a boat exploded it, and killed seventeen men. Admiral Seymour is much less hurt than was first supposed, as he is able to sit up to-day; but concussion of the brain is what they fear. He can see a glimmer of light with the eye, so it is hoped he will recover the sight. The marine officer’s is the most dangerous case, but it is hoped he is doing well also.

The extraordinary thing is that the same evening Admiral Dundas and Pelham were examining a tube; so Caldwell went and got an empty machine (that had been cut open) to put the the tube in, to examine how it explodes. While they were close round. it, the admiral shoved the slide, and the tube exploded, shooting up in the middle of them, and hurting the admiral’s eyes so much that they were looking inflamed and bloodshot yesterday morning when he was explaining all this to me. 

Moral of the story – don’t let senior officers fiddle with recovered devices.  In future blog posts – How the US Army studied the Russian experience of contact and command wire initiated devices and did or didn’t employ them in the American Civil War – and the strange story of another US-Russia connection regarding command wire IEDs.

 

Update on Sunday, October 30, 2011 at 6:32PM by Roger Davies

I should make clear that the Russian experiments only just preceded perhaps more successful US experiments in electrical mine initiation.  In 1841 – 1843 Samuel Colt demonstrated successfully on a number of occasions electrically initiated sea mines on the Hudson and then Potomac rivers sinking a number of target ships. Later developments were undertaken by Maury, a confederate naval officer in the 1860s

Update on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 6:14PM by Roger Davies

see later post  http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/9/26/siemens-tangents-command-wire-ieds-of-1848.html

1880-1890

The curious case of Professor Mezzeroff – IED expert, terrorism proponent and New York liquor salesman

Strange things occurred in the late 1800s  It was a time when the recent development of dynamite and other explosives coupled with the not unrelated fevers of Irish nationalism and anarchy became ever more febrile.  The Irish Republican Brotherhood joined the mix of fashionable secret societies and gained a significant following in the US where it became the “Fenian Brotherhood” and “Clan na Gael”.     Large quantities of arms were acquired  and the Fenians even organized raids into Canada from the USA with the US government curiously ignoring their efforts initially probably because of antipathy towards  the UK for its less than fulsome support for the Union during the Civil War.

In the 1880s a new face appeared on the scene, calling himself “Professor Gaspodin Mezzeroff”.  Claiming a Russian background he portrayed himself as a scientist/chemist and explosives expert imbued with the experience of Russian nihilism… but one who embraced the Irish republican cause.  He lectured extensively at public meetings, raising money and advocating the use of dynamite by terrorists to further the political cause of the Irish republicans.

O’Donovan Rossa, a key Irish republican activist and leader,  advertised courses in IED manufacture, (for $30) taught by Mezzeroff, and Mezzeroff’s meeings were widely reported in the press of the time.  Certainly he came to the attention of the British and their nascent “Special Irish Bureau” of the London Metropolitan Police.

Mezzeroff was decribed as “ a tall, sharp-faced man with curly hair arranged around his pate and a ‘grizzly moustache’, Habitual wearing of black clothes and steely spectacles rounded off the sinister effect of a character straight out of Dostoevsky or Conrad. His origins were mysterious, although he had the accents of an Irishman.  At a public meeting in 1885 in New York to pronounce the death penalty on the Prince of Wales, Mezzeroff was introduced as “ England’s invisible enemy” and he dared the US congress to make laws preventing Irishmen from using dynamite in England – an act recently suggested by General Abbott of the US Army Engineers .

Mezzeroff issued pamphlets with IED designs and certainly IEDs constructed in the US were shipped clandestinely into England, and used in a number of attacks.  An amusingly skeptical, indeed hilarious report of one of Mezzeroffs meetings from the New York Times is worth reading, here

Mezzeroff’s IED designs are curious and worthy of examination, perhaps in a future blog. One included an exploding cigar and indeed I have a contemporaneous photo of such a device from the Scotland Yard museum that I found in a  book published in 1902.

Mezzeroff published a letter in an anarchist pamphlet “The alarm” stating:

“and I won’t stop until every workingman in Europe knows how to use explosives against autocratic government and grasping monopolies.“

He claimed to always carry an IED:

“I take it through the street  in my pocket; I carry it about in horse cars – if you carry two or three pounds (of nitro-glycerine) with you people will respect you much more than if you carried a pistol.”

As it happens, Mezzeroff was a pseudonym.  It was an elderly New Yorker ,a gentleman called Richard Rogers by some sources or “Wilson” by other sources, who by day ran a liquor shop in New York. Another pseudonym was “Dr Hodges”.

Mezzeroff ran a bomb making school in the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn and a number of his graduates went on to short if partially successful IED planting campaigns in the UK. By 1886 however the public interest in such things waned, especially with the implication of an IED causing the events that led to Chicago’s “Haymarket massacre”. It is clear too that the US government became much less tolerant of these exhortations to violence.

As for Mezzeroff, he disappeared from view, probably returning to his real name (whatever that was) and liquor selling shop.

I should also note that there is a fascinating side story about British intelligence operations in the USA against the Fenian bomb makers – numerous paid informers, secret agents, “dirty tricks”, intercepted IEDs and sting operations –  a real “defeat the network” campaign and including a report from the Pinkertons agency describing how, when operating undercover on behalf of the British consul-general in New York, they were shown a number of IEDs made by a Patrick Crowe of Peoria, Illinois. More on this to come.

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