Bomb-​​Busting Buffalo

“A few months ago, spray-​​painted graf­fiti began appear­ing on Baghdad walls,” reports Defense News’ Greg Grant. “‘Kill the Claw,’” it read in Arabic.
The mes­sage was aimed at a new vehi­cle called the Buffalo, a thickly armored mine dis­posal truck that seeks out and dis­poses of deadly impro­vised explo­sive devices (IEDs). Its 30-​​foot retractable arm has a cam­era, to help the oper­a­tor inside see what hes doing, and a claw-​​like rake for find­ing and det­o­nat­ing the road­side bombs.
The insur­gents graf­fiti was not quite the adver­tis­ing cam­paign expected by Buffalo man­u­fac­turer Force Protection, but it is a tes­ta­ment to how effec­tive the 24-​​ton vehi­cle has proven in neu­tral­iz­ing the biggest killer of American troops in Iraq. Since its intro­duc­tion in late 2003, the Buffalo has become the favorite of U.S. Army com­bat engi­neer teams.
Grant’s right. I spent a fair amount of time with engi­neer teams in Baghdad this sum­mer, and they all raved about the vehi­cle. Not just because they were well-​​protected. But also because the thing had a kick-​​ass air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem, too. And com­fort­able seats — which is impor­tant on a 12-​​hour route clear­ance shift.
However, Grant gets it wrong when he says that “so far, nobody has been injured while rid­ing in one of the vehi­cles, which have taken repeated IED hits with only min­i­mal dam­age to exte­rior com­po­nents.“
I talked to sev­eral sol­diers who had Buffalo-​​riding bud­dies injured by the hand­made bombs — and by their own thick skulls. These guys would dig up an explo­sive with the Buffalo’s spindly claw. And then, they’d be so proud of what they found, they’d want to snap a quick pic­ture of their prize. So they’d use the claw to bring the bomb right up to the Buffalo’s cab. And then, the IED would go off.

September 13th, 2005 | Armor, Bomb Squad | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.