What is the composition of an army disposal team?
What we have, the composition of the bomb disposal team, the way it works: There's a Number One, Operator, which would be myself, and then a Number Two, who's normally an enlisted soldier, who's a Corporal, usually, who is aspiring to become an actual Counter-Terrorist Bomb Disposal Operator. And the Number Two's role is really to prepare all the equipment, to command the incident control point when you leave it and go forward to deal with the bomb, and really make sure everything is cohesive, everyone is working together, and everyone knows what they are doing. So, he's the Chief of Staff, almost really, while you're doing the business down at the business end. He's watching you; he knows the language, knows the other technicalities, so that one day he's going to be stepping into your shoes. But if something goes wrong down there, his role is to come down and organize the rescue of you, but his role isn't to go and do bomb disposal itself, because you're the only person qualified to do that. They would call in another operator, if necessary, to go and deal with the bomb. And then in terms of the rest of the team, you've basically got a Counter-Measures Specialist, who deals with all the electronic side and focuses on everything required to stop the bomb from being able to function remotely. You've then got a series of Infantry escorts and their role is basically to provide the immediate security of your team. When I would walk down to a device, there would be what we would call a tactical boundary behind, 20 or 30 metres behind, and they would eventually peel off and go into fire positions and cover my back while I was down at the business end doing the actual neutralization of the bomb itself. So, it's very much a team effort. Everyone has a role to play; everyone mucks in, but the only person that is actually allowed to render safe a device is the Operator. Although, the Number Two does control the wheelbarrow robots and actually press the button that fires it and all that sort of stuff as well.
