Army sends ODIN to Afghanistan

[unhappycamper]

Army sends ODIN to Afghanistan
By Kris Osborn - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 15, 2008 14:14:17 EST

An Army task force that used unmanned aerial vehicles and unconventional aircraft to find and kill thousands of roadside-bomb emplacers in Iraq is being set up in Afghanistan, service officers said.

“We are in the process of adapting the task force to Afghanistan because the terrain and combat environment there is very different from Iraq,” said an Army officer familiar with the task force.

Created at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2006 and sent to Iraq later that year, Task Force ODIN — short for observe-detect-identify-neutralize — worked under the 1st Infantry Division in Tikrit. Its roughly 100 soldiers used UAVs, 10 modified C-12 surveillance planes and ground communication stations to kill more than 3,000 bomb-planters and capture several hundred more, Army officials said.

Updated versions are called Task Force ODIN II.

Last year, Gen. Richard Cody, then the Army’s vice chief of staff, called ODIN a “one-of-a-kind, proof-of-principle outfit. We are moving UAVs to Afghanistan to the aviation brigade to replicate the same capabilities that we have learned from ODIN.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/web_defense_121508_army_ODIN/%2e