Watson, 23, has a particularly dangerous role in the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion based at al-Asad. By choice, he drives a vehicle called a Husky, which looks like an outsized, armor-plated dune buggy, as a member of a route-clearance team.
Watson's job is to drive slowly along the sides of roads and through visual abilities and highly sensitive and adjustable electronic sensors find and mark mines for neutralizing by other team members, who do so through the use of a larger MRAP (Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected) vehicle that has a huge hydraulic arm that digs mines out and snips their wires or destroys their detonators.
(Middle East Times, via UPI)
For those interested, here's a YouTube video showing a Husky enduring an IED attack. The content has been marked as offensive, so the link probably won't go directly to the video portion.
I should mention that the content is marked as offensive because it's an enemy propaganda video. The funny part is that the guy who posted it thinks it shows the destruction of an MRAP, whereas the Husky appears to perform as it was designed--protecting the driver while falling apart in a manner that permits relatively easy repair.
One of the Canadian Force's new Husky deminers used in Afghanistan was blown up after driving over an IED on a narrow road west of Masum Ghar. No one was seriously hurt in the explosion. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Graveland)
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I kind of dig the goofy formatting this time.
Update: Supplied the hotlink to the Youtube video.
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