Photo By Sgt. Phuchung Nguyen | U.S. Marine Corps chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense (CBRN)...... read more read more
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MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan – On August 21, 2013, the normal sounds of a Syrian summer night was interrupted by the whistling of soaring projectiles that were followed by not explosions, but silence. In minutes, the night was filled with coughs and gasps from residents in the city eventually evolving to screams of terror. An odorless and colorless cloud of sarin, a nerve agent, blanketed the city of Ghouta, Syria. This attack, ordered by the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, killed over 1,400 Syrians with no discrimination between men, women, or children.
Specified in the Chemical Weapons Convention, a multilateral treaty with 193 parties who have ratified or acceded to the convention, the use of chemical weapons is banned. However, this agreement does not eliminate the possibility of its use.
In April 1996, General Charles Krulak, the 31st commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, activated the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force to counter the use of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN), or high-yield explosive weapons. In modern day, these Marines are known as CBRN Defense Specialists. Their job is to remove the threat of CBRN related events, train their units on gear confidence and general CBRN knowledge.
At Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Iwakuni, Japan, the resident CBRN experts are assigned to Marine Wing Support Squadron (MWSS) 171. Led by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Mikel Roberts, the CBRN defense officer, MWSS-171 support company commander, and a native of New Mexico, and Staff Sgt. Antonio Carbajal, the MWSS-171 CBRN chief and a native of California, the installation’s personnel are trained yearly to ensure readiness around the air station and are also given the opportunity to train with the CBRN defense team.
“We train Marines to ensure they can understand how to protect themselves in the event they are exposed to a CBRN event,” Carbajal explains. “Units are required to do their job, but they must be able to do it under CBRN conditions as well.”
“This theater is surrounded by some very interesting characters,” said Roberts. “Just having a presence here and demonstrating our training is a deterrent for any future engagements.”
For the fiscal year gas chamber training required of all Marines, the MWSS-171 CBRN defense team splits the training into two main portions, individual survival skills and individual protective equipment confidence exercise (IPECE).
The individual survival skills portion covers 17 essential skills to survive in a CBRN incident. These can be generalized to identification, equipment nomenclature and information, basic bodily functions and required activities with protective gear, aid with protective gear, gear swapping, and decontamination.
IPECE places service members in a controlled environment where they are exposed to CS gas, a commonly used tear gas, to establish trust in their gear and understand how to utilize it in a CBRN environment.
“CBRN is important because it is not a common hazard that people deal with. Once an event takes place, it takes over everything,” Roberts says. “Having people with resident knowledge on how to deal with those situations helps commands understand how to prepare their unit and what is going to be needed when they are exposed to a CBRN agent.”
With how important CBRN defense readiness is, it is essential for the CBRN Marines of MWSS-171, the only CBRN team on mainland Japan, to teach and ensure that all service members are properly informed during every training iteration.
“It’s our job to not only be able to teach this material well but also to do it in a way that makes it stick to both the highest level and lowest level,” Carbajal describes. “If you’re not charismatic or you can’t teach then it becomes an issue.”
Even though platform instruction nor general instruction is not taught at the military occupational school for CBRN Marines, it is a significant part of their job. However, the confidence the Marines show while instructing is one demonstration of the adaptability and skills of a CBRN Marine.
Many of the countries around the world possess CBRN capabilities and the Chemical Weapons Convention cannot guarantee its absence in all events. The reality is, there are CBRN situations all over the world occurring more often than what is on mainstream media. Understanding the possibility that it may happen emphasizes the importance of being ready, at any moment, to use the skills taught from all training in support of the Marine Corps, the United States, and its allies.
| Date Taken: | 09.06.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.19.2024 01:40 |
| Story ID: | 481238 |
| Location: | MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, YAMAGUCHI, JP |
| Web Views: | 71 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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