May 7, 2015

Joint Program Office for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices (JPO C-IED)/Raven’s Challenge Interoperability Exercise

The 2015 Joint Program Office for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices (JPO C-IED)/Raven’s Challenge Interoperability Exercise will run intermittently between May 4 and June 26 at venues in Winter Park, Colorado; Denver International Airport; Colorado; Camp Blanding, Florida; Port of Jacksonville, Florida; Oriskany, New York; Elma, Washington; and Olympia Harbor/McNeil Island, Washington.

The Interoperability Exercise is an annual, interagency C-IED exercise that incorporates scenarios focused on interoperability capabilities between public safety bomb squads and military explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) units in operational environments. The exercise also provides national-level leadership an opportunity to monitor events as they unfold and make preemptive decisions to lessen the impacts of a potential IED campaign.

Several hundred law enforcement and military EOD technicians from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia will travel to the four venues and participate in select IED challenges, including IEDs encountered in a maritime environment, vehicle-borne IEDs, and IED attacks on transportation systems. This year’s event will also include robotic skills demonstrations at each venue.

The exercise is funded by the U.S. Army and is organized by a multi-agency team involving the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the U.S. Army; the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration; and state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

The JPO C-IED/Raven’s Challenge Interoperability Exercise began in 2004 as an ATF-led joint military and law enforcement training event in Seattle, Washington, and was known as Raven’s Challenge. The exercise matured into the JPO C-IED Interoperability Exercise after the 2013 White House release of a U.S. C-IED Policy Statement that reflects the need to integrate the response to multiple explosive incidents into a national response using the National Incident Management System construct.

The JPO C-IED was established in 2009 to develop and implement national counter-IED policy. The role of the JPO C-IED is to improve interagency coordination, reduce duplication of efforts, and systematically eliminate gaps in our security posture that could be exploited by terrorists or other criminals.