FRIDAY FOTO (May 11, 2012)

The Hills Have Eyes

U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Trey Harvey

This striking photo evokes a scene out of an old movie, maybe Beau Geste or Pork Chop Hill. A small outpost surrounded by lonely hills that probably hide an enemy waiting to strike.

What it really shows is U.S. Army Cpl. Esteban Lopez and an Afghan guard on security detail at an entrance to Contingency Operating Post Pirtle King in Afghanistan’s Kunar province (April 18, 2012).  If you click on the photo to enlarge it and then click again you can see the earth and rock-filled Hesco barriers that form the walls of the COP. Lopez is assigned to the 4th Infantry Division’s Company A, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team.

One of the tasks the soldiers perform from the COP is recording and later verifying the identity of locals using a handheld interagency identity detection equipment (HIIDE) that photographs the subject’s iris and face and also takes a latent fingerprint using a sensor. That information is stored in a database that can be used to verify identies.

If you click here, you can see a photo slide show of the mission