Ukraine war has the Marine Corps revamping IED training

Todd South
·3 min read

WASHINGTON ― Marines may be learning whole new ways to fight in a new kind of littoral battlespace, against different adversaries such as the Chinese military, but an old foe still lurks on any likely future battlefield: improvised explosive devices.

While the knowledge and training to counter IEDs didn’t completely disappear, it did fade from prominence for future battle prep and widespread practice. But the threat continues to evolve.

During the Thursday panel on training and education at the 2022 Modern Day Marine Expo in Washington, Maj. Gen. Julian D. Alford, head of Training Command, was asked what lessons, if any, had been learned from the ongoing fight against the Russian invasion of Ukraine that could be applied to training now.

“No. 1 is we have to have counter-IED programs stood back up, period,” Alford said. “It’s criminal if we don’t train our Marines on counter-IED before they deploy.”

Marines 3D print mine-clearing device part, then blow it up

Alford noted that when the Russian forces pulled back from northern Kyiv, multiple Ukrainian civilians and soldiers were killed by IEDs left by the Russians.

“We’ve been preaching this for a long time ― that the IED works,” Alford said. “So, China’s going to use the IED, Russia’s using the IED, Iran, North Korea and, of course, extremists.”

The Marine Corps working to stand back up that training in 2022, Alford said.

Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, build an explosive charge during an EOD exercise in support of exercise Northern Viking 2022, on Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, April 10, 2022. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson/Navy)
Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, build an explosive charge during an EOD exercise in support of exercise Northern Viking 2022, on Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, April 10, 2022. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson/Navy)

In a roundtable with media members following the panel discussion, Alford noted that the Corps previously had a contractor with previous military experience that would scour public sourced and classified reports to keep up with how IEDs were being used across the globe.

Col. Gary McCullar, head of the Marine Corps Engineer School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, is reworking the program right now to better incorporate existing and evolving IED threats, such as those observed in Ukraine, he said.

“The one we stood down had a lot of route clearance, road stuff, so we started to revamp it, with (Lt. Gen. Kevin Iiams) and myself giving him guidance to get back in the jungle,” he said. “And Camp Lejeune is a great place for that because it is a nasty jungle.”

A Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, builds an explosive charge during an EOD exercise in support of exercise Northern Viking 2022, on Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, April 10, 2022. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson/Navy)
A Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, builds an explosive charge during an EOD exercise in support of exercise Northern Viking 2022, on Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, April 10, 2022. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson/Navy)

And as technical-sounding as IED might be, especially some of the more sophisticated versions and emplacements used in recent wars, some of the training harkens back to a century of modern warfare or older.

“Booby traps, that’s essentially all an IED is,” Alford said.

The Marine Corps has four listed counter-IED courses offered at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California that cover understanding, recognizing, finding and seeing the IED threat in the “big picture,” according to the center’s website.

A 2018 Marine Corps Order establishes counter-IED training requirements at the service level.

A Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, stands beside a 310 Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle during an EOD exercise in support of exercise Northern Viking 2022, on Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, April 10, 2022. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson/Navy)
A Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, stands beside a 310 Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle during an EOD exercise in support of exercise Northern Viking 2022, on Keflavík Air Base, Iceland, April 10, 2022. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson/Navy)

“All Marine units will train to operate in environments with an IED threat,” according to MCO 3502.10.

The order also requires all leaders to be familiar with the underlying tenets of IED warfare and how adversaries will employ them. And all forms of Marine air-ground task forces will establish mission essential task lists for operating environments with IEDs.

Counter-IED training was prevalent across the Corps, through schools, predeployment training, Marine expeditionary unit training cycles and even through mobile training teams going to units at home station, he said. The Marines want to get back to that type of training.

“It’s a requirement in all of your (Geographic Combatant Commands) that you go through IED training,” Alford said. “So, it’s incumbent upon us to figure out how to do that for the Corps, because it’s not going away. And this war in Ukraine is just proof of what we already knew.”