Mock 'IEDs' help soldiers prepare for war.

Devices that replicate Iraq's roadside bombs are in such high demand at U.S. military training ranges that the Army recently doubled its orders for so-called "IED simulators."

Improvised explosive devices are the number-one killer of American forces in Iraq, but so far it has been difficult for soldiers and Marines training for war to rehearse tactics to avoid getting killed by IEDs.

In an effort to make drills more lifelike, the Army is buying 800 fake IEDs to be used at training facilities in the United States and Kuwait. The original plan was to acquire 400, but the order later was upped to 800 to meet the services' requests.

The Army Program Executive Office for Simulation Training and Instrumentation, in Orlando, Fla., is purchasing the IED simulators under a $2 million contract with Unitech Corporation. The company expects to deliver all 800 devices by March 2006.

Each IED simulator "kit" contains a remote control that detonates a mock explosive. It doesn't cause bodily harm but creates enough noise and smoke clouds to resemble a real IED event, says Jack Collins, program director at Unitech.

"In the field, they emplace the device, and the insurgent player has a remote transmitter that they can use to detonate the IED," Collins says in an interview. "A safe non-pyrotechnic simulator releases a large smoke cloud and a great deal of noise, without the dangerous pyrotechnic blast."

The mock IED is designed to look like a 155 mm artillery shell. Two other variants include a pressure-sensitive mine and a tripwire booby-trap mine, which can be planted under the hood of a vehicle or inside a building. All devices are powered by a carbon-dioxide cartridge to help generate noise and smoke clouds.

The military for years has used pyrotechnic devices in training exercises. Because they are made up of small quantities of C4 plastic explosive, these pyrotechnics are not only dangerous, but fail to realistically recreate the large explosions caused by IEDs in Iraq, Collins explains.

The Unitech simulator was a redesigned version of an earlier device, made by Raytheon Technical Services Company, of Pomona, Calif. Raytheon made 125 IED simulators under a $250,000 contract. But the device got negative reviews from training commanders, who complained that it was too large, heavy and complicated to operate.

The Army then asked Unitech to design a new version, incorporating feedback from users. The point of having an IED simulator is to allow soldiers to think like insurgents and employ creative tactics, says Collins. "The device is flexible enough that they can use their own imagination and their own lessons learned from the theater to replicate what you can do with a real IED."

These mock IEDs, ironically, often are far more expensive and technologically complex than the real ones. Once they explode, they have to be reassembled and prepped to be used again.

"Our engineers commented that it's much easier to build a real IED than a training one," Collins says.

The IEDs that haunt soldiers and Marines in Iraq are, for the most part, remotely controlled bombs that insurgents build using unexploded artillery shells and cell phones as detonators. The training devices, which cost about $2,000 each, are made with commercially available radio modules, but are more costly because they need to be safe and rugged enough so they can be reloaded after each explosion.

"It's easy to detonate an explosive. But it's much more difficult to build a training device that is safe and reusable," Collins says. "You don't have those constraints when all you want to do is blow something up one time."

The Army, meanwhile, is considering deploying training jammers that would replicate those used by U.S. troops in Iraq to disable radio-operated IEDs.

That project has yet to be approved, and no contractor bids have been awarded yet. Collins says that, even though the jammers deployed to Iraq are classified systems, it would not be difficult produce simulators. Company executives were scheduled to brief Army officials on the proposed technology last month.

"I expect they'll make a decision soon," he says. "It's a fast-moving requirement to be fielded quickly."

Unitech also is competing for an upcoming award for training devices that simulate rocket launchers. Those would be employed by the opposing "red" forces at training ranches to launch rocket-propelled grenades and portable anti-tank weapons.

These programs are pieces of a larger effort to turn military training into a "mission rehearsal" experience that closely resembles real war, says James T. Blake, program executive officer for simulation, training and instrumentation. The organization oversees 452 programs worth $6.7 billion.

Soldiers and Marines are being thrown into a "complex battlefield," and their training must reflect that, Blake says in an interview. For that reason, he says, "We are building villages with IEDs."

The Army also is spending $32 million on convoy simulators that digitally recreate the routes that U.S. troops traverse across Iraq. Two contractors--Lockheed Martin and Raydon--were selected for this project. "When it was reported that the major threat in Iraq was against convoys, it took about three to four months to develop the first combat convoy tactical trainer," says Bruce Harris, vice president for training systems at Dynamics Research Corporation. Programs that traditionally would have taken years to complete are moving at a rapid pace, says Harris. "I think this is going to be the trend going forward."