Chuck O'Conner served with one of the United States military's most elite units: SEAL Team Six. All told, he has over forty years of experience with military demolitions, much of it with tactical explosive breaching. Today, he is sounding the alarm on how soldiers and law enforcement officers are using faulty mathematical equations to calculate minimum safe distances.
One of the biggest issues O'Conner has with current explosive breaching is the use of the K-equation. "They're too close, they're halving their distance," O'Conner explained. "They're using an equation they shouldn't be using," he said in a recent interview. According to O'Conner, the K-equation was designed and tested in open, flat, outdoor areas as opposed to complex interior spaces and urban environments where blast waves reflect and bounce off of countless surfaces.
Explosive breaching is a technique used by the military and in some cases law enforcement to gain entry to a structure using explosives. A specially made explosive charge is placed on a door, window or wall and detonated. The blast creates an entry point for assault teams to rapidly enter and secure suspects or engage enemy combatants.
Another mathematical equation used by explosive breachers is the Weibull equation. "If you calculate a certain PSI (pounds per square inch) it is OK to be in a space," O'Conner says breachers are currently taught. "That is not giving you an accurate representation of the amplified overpressure, it is not designed to do that."
But what does all of this mean? The result is that tactical entry teams are often far too close to explosive blasts, blasts that can and do result in traumatic brain injuries.
O'Conner hopes that a centralized authority can be established to oversee safety protocols across the various military branches and law enforcement agencies that work with explosives, but until that time he said he is willing to reach out to, "one operator at a time" in hopes of educating and ultimately preventing service members and first responders from further injury.
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Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.