Cleaning Up Mines in Kuwait : Firms With an Elite Corps of Experts Compete for Deadly Job

“Everybody and their brother is getting into it,” complained John P. Boyden at the edge of a minefield that cuts across Kuwait’s southern desert from the Persian Gulf to the Saudi Arabian border. The deadly rows of mines, poking up like corn stubble from the sand, stretched into the distance behind him.

“Before this happened, there were probably only three companies in the United States regularly doing explosives disposal work,” he said. Now, he estimates, there may be twice that. Boyden is president of UXB International Inc., an explosives disposal company based in Chantilly, Va., and staffed largely by former military disposal experts.

As the first bombs fell in the allied air war against Iraq, UXB and its competitors began to draw up plans to cash in on the cleanup. As the immensity of the bombing effort became clear, the postwar market--apparently the first private-industry battleground cleanup in history--began to look even more promising.

Any day now, the first contract to a U.S. company to dispose of hundreds of thousands of unexploded bombs and unused ammunition, several hundred miles of Iraqi minefields, and possibly the wrecked tanks, trucks and bunkers littering the desert is expected to be awarded by the Kuwait Ministry of Defense. Boyden believes that the contract for the American sector alone will be worth well over $100 million.

“This job in Kuwait is on a massive scale,” agreed Browning Rockwell, president of Horizon Trading Co. “There are probably more explosives out there than have ever been in one location before.”

Horizon, an export trading and marketing company based in Washington, has formed a joint venture with UXB, called UXB Kuwait, to bid for a portion of the work.

Royal Ordnance, a subsidiary of British Aerospace, last month received the first private contract--to work in the British army’s sector of Kuwait as well as to clear explosives in the burning oil fields ahead of the firefighters. That deal reportedly could be worth up to $170 million over the months or years of the cleanup.

In the U.S. competition, at least two other companies besides UXB are prominently mentioned, including General Dynamics Services Co., a subsidiary of defense giant General Dynamics Corp., based in St. Louis, and States International Inc. of Columbia, S.C.

Like UXB, States International has had a team in Kuwait for weeks lobbying for a contract, according to Paul Sutton, the company’s president. His technicians, Sutton says, are “ready to go. The enthusiasm is on a very high level.”

Part of this may be the pay. Technicians with the appropriate experience will make more than $100,000 a year.

Bomb and mine disposal is often described as a young man’s game. Indeed, most technicians are in their late 20s to middle 30s.

But they will have had years of experience before they are hired by the best-known private companies. Virtually all U.S. technicians are first trained at the Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal at Indian Head, Md. After leaving the military, the best may join the estimated 500 or so U.S. technicians, most of whom know each other through an informal national and international network.

“I have not seen resumes of women, though that’s not to say there aren’t any,” said J. Fitzgerald O’Connor Jr., general counsel for States International. Most of the companies submitting bids to dispose of Kuwait’s mines and unexploded bombs expect to use as many as 300 of these specialists, most of whom free-lance their services.

“Even if someone else gets the contract, the people who will do it will likely be the same people,” said Wyche Bonnot, Kuwait country manager for UXB Kuwait, another U.S. venture bidding for the disposal work. “They are a small, highly trained group.”

Some of the most dangerous work, in fact, will not be on land but in Kuwaiti territorial waters. And hoping to be awarded a contract to dispose of mines hidden in the waters of the Persian Gulf is the British company Sea Search, a subsidiary of Telerecord Ltd.

How are marine mines removed?

“Very carefully,” said Dave Moore with a grin. Moore is technical director for Sea Search, awaiting word with other members of the firm in an old house known as the Swamp, in a corner of Brit Camp, the main British military encampment. Like everyone else, he has no real idea how many mines could face his divers.

“Nobody has a clue,” Moore said. “If you have a civilized war, I suppose you have maps.”

Moore also dismissed environmental concerns about the standard technique for ridding an area of mines--blowing them up.

“As long as the fish come to the surface, you might as well eat them,” Moore said.

The marine mines range from World War I designs to computer-equipped smart mines, which “don’t wake up until they hear the right acoustical patterns,” Moore said. These modern mines can also carry deadly anti-personnel devices, which is why the preferred removal method--called counter-mining--is to find and identify each mine, mostly using electronic sensing devices. Then underwater robots place an explosive charge next to the mine, which is detonated.

Mines are now normally disarmed by divers only when absolutely necessary. But in the shallow coastal waters of the Gulf, Moore believes that divers will have to be used frequently, because ships won’t be able to get close enough to use their robots, which are operated through cables.

Despite similar counter-mining methods on land, there will also be a human risk there, UXB’s Boyden said. While the Iraqi minefields are clearly marked, Boyden worries more about the unexploded cluster bombs dropped by allied forces during their air attacks.

“They’re very sensitive,” Boyden said, “and with the blowing sand, it’s easy not to see one and step on it. . . . This is an extremely dangerous job, by anybody’s standards. In the United States, you’re dealing with (the cleanup of) training ranges. It’s live ammunition but a more controlled environment.”

When not working in foreign minefields, UXB and similar companies clean up after the U.S. armed forces. In fact, UXB just signed a $44-million contract with the Navy to clear a test firing range near Fallon, Nev.

UXB has put “well into six figures” into the presentation of its Kuwait proposal, Senior Vice President Richmond Dugger said Monday. The company keeps hearing that a decision about the contract will arrive in a matter of days, and meetings between Boyden and Kuwaiti officials continue.

“They are meeting daily, discussing the scope of work, the payment terms, all of the things that should happen prior to contract award,” Dugger said. “But nothing has happened. It’s the same with a lot of other contractors over there.”

Who Clears Mines?The typical explosive ordnance disposal technician:

* Male

* Age: late 20s to mid-30s

* Trained during military service at the Navy’s unique school at Indian Head, Md.

* Is a self-employed contractor

* Makes more than $100,000 a year on a job like the Kuwait cleanup

* Is insured: UXB International, an established U.S. explosives-disposal company, keeps $1 million in insurance at all times. “We use an insurance broker to look for the best deal every year,” says John P. Boyden, UXB president. “Sometimes it’s hard to explain to clients why so much of the cost is for insurance.”

Leftovers From the War Despite the popular conception of minefields as hidden, deadly surprises, in warfare they are usually clearly marked by barbed-wire fences since their true value is to slow or redirect an advancing army. Because of this and the fact that the Iraqis placed their mines in standard patterns minefield cleanup is expected to be less hazardous than the disposal of unexploded ordinance, particularly cluster bombs dropped by allied planes.