POWERED BY
How to Remove an Improvised Explosive Device with the MK19
Published 2 years ago
Americans on patrol in Iraq find what they believe is an improvised explosive device. They use the 40mm blowback operated grenade launcher known as the MK-19 to remove it.
If you've ever had to sit in an IED cordon for six hours with your patrol hanging out waiting for a sniper to shoot at you, then you probably already know why they chose to use their MK-19 to target this IED. EOD is a great unit, in fact they're some of the best. Regardless of their branch, I have never met an EOD technician who wasn't a top-notch individual prepared to take on whatever the insurgency in Iraq or the Taliban had to throw at them. That said, they were one of the most overtasked units in both OIF and OEF.
What you're looking at here is a patrol who believes they may have found an IED. Instead of waiting for EOD to come take a look at it and remove it, they make the call to just fire a single 40mm grenade at it from their gun-truck's MK-19. Judging from the massive explosion which took out nearby power-lines, they were correct in their assumption and probably saved themselves a lot of time. Time that would have been spent sitting in an IED cordon waiting for a sniper to draw down on some of their idle turret gunners.
