Canadian Task Force takes three-pronged approach to IEDs

Ottawa, Ontario - The Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Task Force (C-IEDTF) acts as the strategic focal point for all C-IED efforts at the Canadian Department of National Defence.

The task force stood up in June 2007 in response to the threats that Canadian Forces (CF) personnel faced on deployment in areas such as Afghanistan.

“When the Taliban realized … that they couldn’t win against Canadian soldiers in a conventional head-to-head fight, they transitioned to what we’d see as more conventional insurgent type of tactics: hit and run and use of improvised type of explosive devices to engage our troops in an asymmetrical type of fashion,” said Col Lavoie. “Clearly, we needed to do something about this new threat.”

Today, the task force organizes itself along three lines of operation:

• Preparing the force entails the training the soldiers receive as they prepare to go overseas.
• Attacking the network encompasses the change of the Canadian Forces from a defensive mindset in favour of going after the insurgents who employ IEDs as a weapon of choice and the insurgent networks that facilitate the use of IEDs.

• Defeating the devices ranges from technology and training to actually neutralizing—finding and defeating—the device itself.

“I give them in that order because there is a philosophy in the C-IED mindset that is called ‘left of boom.’ All that simply means is that our best chance of defeating this threat is to prepare our soldiers and to target the insurgency that uses this as far away as possible from an actual bomb detonating,” said Col Lavoie.

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