As the female suicide bombing in Diyala the other day demonstrates, the more Iraqi government and security forces take charge and the US takes a back seat to counterinsurgency, the emphasis on offense is going to increasingly shift to defense.
Some folks I met at the Modern Day Marine Expo last week have an interesting system called "Counter Bomber" that uses radar and some wiz bang algorithms to detect if someone is concealing a suicide vest under his clothing.
Here's a short video that explains how the system works...
Counter Bomber costs about $300K, and that includes a computer and software that gives a no-joke "Marine proof" indication of whether someone's hiding something or not. A chime sounds if the radar detects a signature (it basically can pick up metallic objects under clothing) and gives a green-for-safe or red-for-threat indicator as the person passes the Counter Bomber's radar. The system works up to about 150 meters and the designers say it's best to have a couple arrayed so security officers can get a 360-degree view of what the person might be hiding.
Company reps say there are 12 Counter Bombers fielded to Marines in combat: eight systems are fielded in Iraq, including al Asad air base and the busy entrance to Ramadi on route Michigan, and four are stationed in Afghanistan.
-- Christian
US Sells Secret Anti-IED Tech to Iraq
The U.S. has taken the unprecedented -- and some would say questionable -- step of selling some of its most sophisticated counter-IED technology to the Iraqi government, equipping specialized police, military and interior ministry troops with electronic systems designed to detonate roadside bombs and jam triggering signals.
Officials from Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq announced April 20 that its foreign military sales office had sold the Iraqis 411 Lockheed Martin-built "Symphony" counter-IED systems. A few of the Symphony systems are already up and running on Iraqi government vehicles, the command said, with the rest due to be installed by the end of the summer.
"This system will afford the Iraqi security forces long-term, independent counter-IED protection and relieves coalition troops from this responsibility so the latter may perform other tasks," said Army Lt. Col. Will Flucker, the command's Symphony program manager, in an April 20 release. "This system is a critical part of security transition from the coalition forces to the government of Iraq and integral to developing [Iraqi security forces] into a long-term partner in the global war on terror."
But some might see handing over America's most sophisticated and top secret counter-IED technology to Iraqi ministries, whose loyalty to Baghdad is less than certain, as extremely risky. Electronic jammers like the Symphony have saved American lives in a war where the roadside bomb is the number-one killer, and the possibility that an Iraqi official could hand over the technology to an insurgent or unfriendly government is all too real.
"You have to assume that about the third one that we ship over there is going to go straight out the back door," said John Pike, director of the Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-area defense research group. "We have a fundamental dilemma here in trying to indigenize these security forces."
Due to its highly-classified technology, Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Ellen Mitchell refused to discuss Symphony's capabilities or the Iraqi sale. A 2007 Pentagon contract announcement called the Symphony a "programmable, radio-frequency IED defeat system that is vehicle mounted."
The Army's Flucker acknowledged the risk that the technology could wind up in the wrong hands, saying the $51 million deal had been inked only after "numerous technical and administrative delays."
"Most of the administrative hurdles are related to providing effective technology to the partner nation while ensuring such technology is not compromised and does not proliferate beyond Iraq's borders," Flucker wrote Military.com in an email response to questions.
The Iraqi system will incorporate anti-tamper technology along with a fill or operating code that periodically expires and must be renewed in order for the system to operate, and the use of "trusted agents" to handle, control and distribute the operating code, Flucker added.
And that accounts for part of the lengthy "administrative" delays that kept the Symphony -- which costs about $78,000 per system -- out of Iraqi hands for nearly two years.
"This requires a combination of technical and administrative controls that require testing and refinement before they can be implemented with a high degree of confidence," Flucker said.
Pike said that electronic jamming of IEDs is a problem of physics -- there are a limited number of frequencies used to trigger IEDs and the jammers attack all of them. So a Symphony winding up in the hands of the insurgents would have limited utility.
"Whatever waveform it is using to jam ... will by definition be disclosed to the enemy when you turn it on," Pike said, adding that measures to prevent tampering or unauthorized use seem to work.
"I think that they are secure at least to the extent that Iran can't do anything about it," he said.
The Symphony systems will be doled out to Iraqi special forces, ministry of defense officials and interior ministry troops -- including Iraqi army, police, national police and explosive ordnance disposal units. The deal includes a nine-month support contract from Lockheed Martin to "ensure the units function properly and the Iraqis can properly utilize the systems to their full advantage," officials said.
Aside from protecting Iraqi officials, troops and police from roadside bomb ambushes, Flucker hopes the deal will help get more U.S. troops off the road by freeing them up from the dangerous and tedious duties of convoy escort.
"Affording counter-IED protection to the [Iraqi security forces] has been a partnership endeavor from the outset," Flucker added. "Given the theater IED threat, the [government of Iraq] and the coalition have wanted to make this happen for some time now."
-- Christian
Blowin' Your Mind
First of all, let me just say up front: Since my recent return from Iraq, I have officially become a fan of the MRAP.
O.K., I said it. You've read plenty of skeptical stories here at DT on the usefulness of the MRAP and the prudence of a "crash" program to buy gobs of them for Iraq. I stand by my principle criticism. But after having spent some time in MRAPs -- particularly the RG-33 6x version -- I have to admit I feel pretty safe riding in them.
I'll lay out more of my case in subsequent posts, but suffice it to say in the Humvee I have to get my 6'2" frame in and out of one like a clown car -- folding one leg in and reaching out to fold the next one into the small foot wells. There's no place to stow a bag and tri-pod or other reporting gear in a Humvee.
Not so the MRAP. Cushy seats, room for multiple coolers, backpacks full of snivel gear and snacks and radios, DVD players and iPod speakers.
I'll take an MRAP over a Humvee any day.
Now to the point...
One of the cool pieces of gear I noticed when I was tromping around with some EOD folks near Tikrit is this crazy snow blower looking gizmo attached to several of the unit's MRAPs. The unit commander tells me they're called "Blow Torch" and what the guys tell me is that they shoot out a blistering stream of air to uncover IEDs, command wire and other detonators attached to a roadside bomb without having to tinker with it by hand or with a robot.
The system was recognized in August 2007 as one of the Army's "greatest inventions" and so far it's been deployed to principally Army units in Iraq for about two years.
-- Christian
Helmet Sensors Measure Blast Impact
The Army is reporting on a new helmet sensor that might lead to better helmets in the future. Here's a bit:
The sensors gather data on impacts ranging from a dropped or kicked helmet to a vehicle crash to a nearby weapon firing or explosion, Maj. Schaffer explained. They measure two specific actions: the energy wave generated by the "event," and the "acceleration" or jolt that follows.
In the short term, data collected through the sensors is expected to help the Army improve the helmets and other protective equipment it provides its soldiers, Maj. Schaffer said.
A longer-term application -- one Maj. Schaffer emphasized the medical community isn't yet ready for -- is to use impact data to help diagnose traumatic brain injuries.
"With the number of IEDs that we're seeing in Iraq and the traumatic brain injury that's coming out of it, obviously somewhere down the line we are looking at correlating the blast and the injury," he said. "But in the near term, we are looking at developing a more protective piece of equipment. The advanced combat helmet we have out there is the best in the world, but we are always looking at ways to make our products better, and this is a great way to start."
Target munitions (IEDs, UXO) are destroyed by heating, resulting in a low-yield detonation. In other words, instead of exploding with their intended full force, the target munition "pops" or "fizzles" out, rendering it safe.
The optical system focuses the 1 kW laser into a "few cm diameter" spot at the target range. Within that spot, the average intensity is over 200 W/cm2. That intensity is approximately 20 times the average thermal output of a standard burner element on an electric stovetop. Over seconds or minutes of illumination time, that effect is sufficient to provide the thermal load necessary to detonate the targets used in the demonstration.
Late last month, the folks at Boeing test fired a Humvee-mounted laser that can be used to destroy IEDs and unexploded ordnance.
Boeing says the 1-kilowatt solid state laser took out five targets during a test shoot at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The laser was mated to an Avenger air defense vehicle, which usually fires Stinger anti-aircraft missile at low flying aircraft.
The company said the Laser Avenger also zapped two stationary UAVs sitting on the ground – a long way from proving the system can shoot down airborne drones, but still enough for Boeing to claim the laser could be used for UAVs on the move.
Whether it can blow up flying robots is superfluous at this point. Typical IED disposal in Iraq and Afghanistan is a very high risk proposition, requiring a technician to place charges on the bomb, use a robot to do it or a mechanical arm. I know from experience that one insurgent technique is to allow the EOD personnel to deploy to Buffalo arm on an IED, then detonate it, blowing the complex and vulnerable hydraulic arm off and rendering the vehicle useless.
Boeing wouldn’t say how far away the laser works, but even if it’s a little further than the range of a robot or a Buffalo arm, it could be a better solution than today’s options.
Boeing release follows:
The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] has successfully demonstrated that its Avenger-mounted laser system can neutralize the kinds of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and unexploded ordnance (UXO) that threaten U.S. troops deployed in war zones.
During laser firings Sept. 26-27 at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., the Laser Avenger engaged and destroyed five targets representing IED and UXO threats. Laser Avenger, equipped with a 1-kilowatt solid-state laser, proved its effectiveness at ranges that allowed the system to be operated at safe distances from the target. During the test, the system also took a step toward demonstrating a counter-unmanned aerial vehicle capability by destroying two small unmanned aerial vehicles that were stationary on the ground.
Laser Avenger is a Boeing-funded initiative to show that directed energy weapons are relevant to today's battlefield and are ready to be fielded.
Boeing developed the system in only eight months, underscoring the company's ability to rapidly respond to warfighters' needs.
Laser Avenger also is the latest in a series of Boeing upgrades to expand the Avenger air defense system into an Agile Multi-Role Weapon System (AMWS) with ground-to-ground as well as ground-to-air capability.
The laser was added while retaining Avenger's ability to carry other weapons, including missiles and a machine gun. By building upon the Avenger, of which there are over 600 fielded worldwide, Laser Avenger will take advantage of an existing global logistics network, making it highly supportable.
"Boeing's investment strategy is to move some of its new directed energy weapon systems into field demonstrations, and Laser Avenger is the first one we're rolling out," said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Directed Energy Systems. "Laser Avenger provides the speed-of-light and ultra-precision capability that the warfighter needs today to safely neutralize improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordnance."
"Laser Avenger marries the best of Boeing -- our proven Avenger system with the great capabilities of Boeing's directed energy business unit,"
said Debra Rub-Zenko, vice president of Boeing Integrated Missile Defense. "Adding a laser to the Avenger arsenal expands the capability of this flexible system to meet battlefield requirements today and tomorrow."
The laser segment of Laser Avenger will have uses beyond the counter-IED, counter-UXO mission. For instance, it could be upgraded to have a shoot-on-the-move capability and to destroy other kinds of targets, including low-flying unmanned aerial vehicles.
The general in charge of operations for coalition forces in northern Iraq had an interesting technical request during an interview with fellow bloggers this morning (Sept. 24). He had a lot of other things to say, of course, but I thought DT readers would be particularly interested in this little tidbit.
When asked what kind of gear items he needed that he didn’t already have, Brig. Gen. Mike Bednarek applauded the money and effort put into devising counter IED technology and getting urgent needs out to the field, but had one simple request.
I’ll paraphrase a bit here:
“If I could have one thing that could help me right now, it would be some sort of low-power laser cutter that we could mount to a Humvee and as we drive along, it would cut command detonation wires along our route.”
This perked my interest and I’d like to see if any DT readers have some input here. This idea certainly makes sense, but I wonder if there’s anything out there already to meet Bednarek’s demands, or whether this problem has already been considered and deemed unworkable.
I’ve seen that weird IR triggering device that has been recently retrofitted to Humvees – the one that looks like a big, flat black square on a pole extending from the front bumper – which is used to detonate EFP roadside bombs. But I don’t know if there’s something out there like the laser cutter Bednarek needs.
Let us know if any of you have heard anything about something like this. I’d like to be able to put someone in touch with the general if there is – maybe we here at DT can do a little more than debate amongst ourselves. Maybe we can help someone save a few lives in the process…
It’s dangerous work searching vehicles at a TCP, or traffic control point, in Iraq. Any one of those pickups, taxi cabs or dump trucks passing through could hide thousands of pounds of explosives and a sweat-soaked suicide bomber itching for a run at some heavenly virgins.
Forcing the occupants to exit the vehicle, searching under every seat and in every nook and cranny can be extremely hazardous to your health, to say the least. But one tool the troops are using in the sandbox is helping keep the danger at bay in busy checkpoints.
Backscatter x-ray machines have proven vital in the battle against VBIDs. But the panel truck-sized vehicles are large, conspicuous, meaty targets for insurgent RPGs. So American Science and Engineering, Inc. passed along a release to Defense Tech that could offer a much more elegant solution to the backscatter capability needed in austere environments abroad.
AS&E writes:
American Science and Engineering's ZBV Military Trailer(TM) is a rugged X-ray screening system built onto a standard military trailer. With one-sided, Backscatter imaging, security officials can use ZBV Mil Trailer for screening vehicles, containers, and other cargo for terrorist threats and contraband — simply by towing the trailer past the subjects, or by remaining stationary while vehicles drive past the trailer. The ZBV Mil Trailer employs AS&E's patented Z® Backscatter(TM) technology, which produces photo-like images of the contents of a container or vehicle, highlighting organic materials such as explosives. Development of the ZBV Military Trailer was supported by a November 2006 R&D contract for $2.2 Million to deliver a ruggedized ZBV for the U.S. Government. The ZBV Mil Trailer is ideal for screening vehicles for car and truck bombs.
ZBV Mil Trailer also includes Forwardscatter technology to complement Z Backscatter imaging. Forwardscatter presents a second scatter perspective that displays dense objects in cargo, such as the shielding found around nuclear WMD. With ZBV Mil Trailer in stationary scan mode, Forwardscatter detectors are positioned opposite the X-ray source in the trailer. The Forwardscatter image is displayed simultaneously with the Z Backscatter image, providing the operator with more information on the contents of a scanned vehicle.
I know from my experience in Ramadi that these trucks are a lifesaver. But they’re expensive, obtrusive and only optimized for high flow areas...there was only one of them for the entire capital city of al Anbar. With this sleeker solution, troops might be able to position this capability at many more checkpoints, leaving insurgent bombers few avenues to deliver their vehicle borne devastation.
Well it looks like the first spasm of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle orders has been launched, with the Pentagon inking a – get this - $481 million contract for 1,000 vehicles this week.
That’s a half a billion dollars for 300 of the 15-ton Cougar Cat-1 (MRAP-MRUV) vehicles and 700 of the 16-ton Cat-2 (MRAP-JEERV) behemoths - all going to Force Protection Industries, Inc.
Excuse me for being the skunk at the picnic, but I’m skeptical of the value of these purchases.
The MRAP is not a tactical vehicle. It is a specialized armored truck designed primarily for protecting EOD units and their gear from explosions while diffusing bombs or mines. The Marine Corps’ top gear buyer, Brig. Gen. Mike Brogan, admitted last month the MRAP was viewed by the Corps as a “boutique vehicle” for certain specialties. They asked for a limited quantity of these vehicles in the 2008 budget and 2007 wartime funding request based on that view.
Then what happened? You guessed it, Congress stepped in. After browbeating every service and DoD official they could over the meager number of MRAPs in the budget, Army and Marine officials snapped to and revamped their request to satisfy lawmakers’ new infatuation.
Remember again: the MRAPs are not tactical vehicles. Of course, neither is a Humvee (it was designed as a logistics vehicle), but it’s a lot easier to use as a tactical vehicle with current modifications than the MRAP in an urban counterinsurgency. The giant, heavy MRAP vehicle is ill-suited to the urban fight. You might as well drive around the city in a Bradley fighting vehicle.
I know I’ll probably get a lot of crap for this, but I think the services recognize that the MRAP isn't what they need but they’re responding to the congressional love affair with the vehicle because they have to. The push is forcing the services to buy MRAPs from nine different manufacturers, and though military officials insist they’re all similar mechanically, you know there are going to be widgets and nick-knacks that are different, requiring their own logistics chain.
And what will the Army and Marine Corps do with these vehicles after U.S. involvement in Iraq is drawn down, which no matter how you look at it is inevitable soon? The services are spending millions on the development of a new version of the Humvee that answers a lot of the shortfalls found in the 1980s-era vehicle, including a blast-deflecting underbody and gas-hybrid engines. But with thousands of MRAP vehicles sitting in motor pools around the country, it may be difficult to justify spending money on an improved Humvee.
My last problem with the MRAP is that it’s too big and intimidating. Fielding a vehicle that troops are supposed to travel in every time they go outside the wire that looks like it will crush you if you even look at it doesn’t seem to me to be a good way to win hearts and minds, and makes it difficult to interact with a population you’re trying to win over. At least in a Humvee you’re a ground level and can quickly jump out to pass a few soccer balls to the kids. Not so in the Cougar, which is so far off the ground and has such thick windows, it’s as if there’s no human in the thing at all.
What would Gen. Petraeus say if he were asked his honest opinion of the MRAP infatuation? Does it serve his counterinsurgency plan at all?
So my main man Rob Curtis is back in the sandbox for a five-week trip with a cub Air Force Times reporter covering Air Force security operations and training missions there.
Rob and I worked for a couple years on a documentary project and have been through some pretty heavy times together.
I wanted to direct you to some photos he shot of the business end of an explosively formed penetrator roadside bomb that struck a vehicle belonging to the unit he’s embedded with. We’ve both seen the effects of an IED, but I’ve never seen anything like this.
American officials are unanimous in their belief that this weapon comes from Iran. If so, I don’t understand how this doesn’t prompt more consternation from the public and politicians on both sides of the aisle – and of the Iraq war debate.
That may or may not be true. But the thought that one of my bros was just one patrol away from being maimed or killed by a weapon designed and/or built in Iran to maim and kill Americans is pretty upsetting…
It’s also helpful to note this exchange between CNN’s Barbara Starr and Multinational Corps-Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno on Friday…
Q General Odierno, Barbara Starr from CNN. You spoke about Iran again. Are you able yet to tell us that there is direct evidence that it is the Iranian government or the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or Al-Qods that is directly ordering this interference in Iraq? Are you learning anything from the Al-Qods member -- people you still have in custody? Are you able to carry your evidence any further than just they're out there and they’re causing interference?
GEN. ODIERNO: I would just say right now -- I'm only willing to say that it's clear that the Qods Force is involved in what's going on here by supplying training, money and weapons. We're still working other aspects of it, but I'm not willing to comment on anything along those lines.
I would say, though, it is clear that they continue to interfere, the Qods Force continues to attempt to interfere in Iraqi -- in operations inside of Iraq. We continue to intercept weapons. We know there's money that's flowing in from Iran to certain insurgent groups in Iraq, and we will continue to work through this.
And in fact we're working now to determine whether they are in fact not only providing support to Shi'a groups but also Sunni insurgent groups. We don't have any specific proof of that yet, but there's been some indications that that could in fact be the case.
Q Very briefly, why would the Iranians be supporting Sunni groups?
GEN. ODIERNO: I think it's mainly because they want to continue to create chaos in Iraq. They do not want this government potentially to succeed. But additionally, I think they want to try to tie down coalition forces here. And it's clear that they are attempting to affect what's going on inside of Iraq on a daily basis, and we have to be very aware of that, and we will continue to be aware of that and work it.
Makes you think about the timeless idiom: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
My old friend Bryan Bender had an interesting story today in the Boston Globe on a new initiative within the Pentagon to oversee the inner workings of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.
It looks as if the Pentagon wants to get its arms around the incredible number of projects JIEDDO is working on and to better account for the billions of dollars being spent each year on countermeasures and anti-IED tactics.
The IED Task Force will be co-chaired by retired Army Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, whom Bender reports is a noted Iraq war critic. Funk commanded the 3rd Armored Division during the Gulf War and has been a semi-frequent guest on news talk shows criticizing the administration’s rush to war.
Coming on the heels of reports that the White House is having a hard time finding someone to become its War Czar, it seems the administration is running out of reliable allies even to honcho top military programs.
We’ll see if the Task Force can help the military come to grips with the deadly counter-IED problem.
I’m checking on the accuracy of the report, but I thought it would be worth giving this story from “Debka file” a closer look.
I usually take Debka’s entries with a grain of salt, but I gotta tell you, sometimes they’re eerily on the mark. Rumor has it, the site is a public voice for the Israeli intelligence services, dropping hints to real or imagined threats in hopes of smoking out reality. On this one, I’m only too happy to oblige.
Debka’s latest post hints that al Qaeda is starting to develop its own electronic countermeasures to U.S. anti-IED technology. As has been reported on these pages quite frequently, the U.S. relies heavily on electronic means to detect and defeat roadside bombs. It seems that AQ is getting in on the act – possibly with Iranian help.
Soon after [electronic jammers] were fitted on US military vehicles and went into successful use, al Qaeda came up with a device capable of jamming and disarming both US electronic measures by radio signals. The Islamist terrorists thus escalated their challenge to the US military by introducing electronic warfare.
Their success has boosted the US and British death toll in Iraq. Of the 50 US and UK soldiers who died in Iraq in the first 9 days of April, 30 were killed by IEDs. Al Qaeda’s mystery device is believed by military experts to account for the soaring rate of effective roadside bomb hits on American vehicles, even those fitted with the new counter-measures...
...al Qaeda is suspected of acquiring its advanced electronic warfare technology from Iran, which also supplies the IEDs to Iraq’s Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. Tehran owns an interest in the successful performance of its weaponry on Iraq’s battlefields and, most of all, in proving its technology is superior to American systems.
The notion doesn’t seem too far fetched. When it comes down to it, a lot of the back and forth on IEDs is a low-tech game: washing machine timers, radio phone transmitters, garage door openers, cell phones. Maybe it’s not so hard to counter American counter-measures after all?
DefenseLink has posted a Navy contract awarded to Remotec, Inc., Clinton, Tenn., for $45,000,000. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for robotic systems, accessories, spare parts, depot level repair support, and operator and technician training.
("Indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity"? And you make a cool $45 mil? Where do you sign up for that kind of work? No wonder the defense budget is so gynormous.)
Meanwhile over at National Defense, Stew Magnuson has a nice capture of the Navy's next gen bomb disposal robots.
Check it out.
And speaking of robots, here's a classic from a couple of years ago. (Not sure who "Gruntie the Knucklehead" is at the end):
The pictures released last week of Iraqi high-tech explosives surprised me. These special 'superbombs' that have caused so many US casualties -- they look like they had been assembled in someone's garage.
These bombs belong to a class known as EFP --'Explosively Formed Projectile' or 'Explosively Formed Penetrator,' depending on who you're talking to. They compress a metal liner into a slug and fire it at the target some distance away.
The picture shows what a real EFP munition looks like. This is M2 Selectable Lightweight Attack Munition (SLAM). It's small enough to put in your pocket and weighs a couple of pounds.
This version has been used by US Special Forces for the last 15 years or so. As GlobalSecurity.org describes it, SLAM is versatile, too:
It will be used to support hit-and-run, ambush, and harassing, and urban warface missions. SLAM will also be employed by Light Combat Engineers and Rangers where missions warrant the use of such a device....SLAM is lightweight, lethal, easily emplaced, and can be carried in the quantity necessary to neutralize a broad range of targets.
Different modes allow SLAM to be triggered by the heat or magnetic signature of a passing vehicle or by a timer -- or it can be set off by a human operator. It can be emplaced in seconds and spits out a lethal slug which can punch through 40mm of steel armor at a range of 25 feet. You can leave it on the ground covered in dirt to attack a vehicle's belly, or conceal it beside a road for side attack.
No doubt the Russians and Chinese have their own versions of SLAM, and these have probably been copied too. So you might expect a rougher, cheaper copy to appear in Iraq if it was supplied from the outside.
But as has been observed here, anyone can make crude and simple EFP munitions in a basic workshop. All you need is a lump of plastic explosive and a piece of copper. Shape the copper into a saucer, put the explosive under it, and you're there. Obviously this will be a lot less efficient, accurate and reliable than something like SLAM (optimal design of the the metal 'lens' is an art requiring a lot of computer power), but you can compensate by making it ten times bigger if you need to.
Maybe the insurgents should be given some credit for being able to build their own gear, or maybe there's more intelligence we don't know. But if EFP mines were being supplied by an outside source, you might expect to see somethng a lot slicker.
UPDATE 11:37: Speaking of surprises, Centcom commander Adm. Fox Fallon doesn't agree that the Iranian government has been supplying Iraq's EFPs. He's notalone. Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Peter Pace, on the other hand, seemed to back away from his previous, doubting statements -- at least a little. More here.
UPDATE 01:20: The bombs aren't the only issue, of course. According to the Telegraph, Iranian-supplied sniper rifles are also making their way into Iraq.
UPDATE 15/02/07: Steyr, the Austrian makers of those .50 cal sniper rifles say there's no proof they came from Iran - and that they might not even be Steyr-made rifles at all.
The debate these days is all about whether or not Tehran is supplying Iraq's armor-piercing bombs. But the roots of these explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, goes all the way back to Hitler-era Germany, the Yorkshire Ranter notes. Military historian Larry Grupp explains.
Dr. Hubert Schardin was definitely not a Nazi. Nevertheless, he stood stiffly at attention in full Luftwaffe dress uniform at Gestapo headquarters in Budapest, Hungary. It was the spring of 1944 and Schardin, a brilliant German explosives physicist, needed assistance. Under direct orders from Adolf Hitler to develop new superweapons, he needed the Gestapo's help to locate a famous but reclusive Hungarian colonel named Misznay who could provide detailed information regarding the complex physics involved in shaped charge explosives.
Colonel Misznay was, by all historical indicators, so elusive that today we are even uncertain what his real first name was. In all probability, Misznay was either a double or perhaps even a triple agent. After World War II, he dropped out of sight in the Eastern Bloc. Yet his last name lives on as a result of a special explosive phenomenon he identified, called the Misznay-Schardin effect -- a phenomenon that recognizes that fragments can be thrown from the face of an explosive charge in a predictable pattern, much like a projectile from a rifle barrel.
It's that effect which forms the heart of the EFP's deadly power. ThesePentagondocuments. , obtained by ABC News, give the best public run-down I've seen so far on how lethal these bombs have been.
(Big ups: AT)
Deadly Bombs' Long, Winding Trail
The U.S. government's claim yesterday, that the Iranians are supplying weapons to Iraqi militants, was met with a huge amount of skepticism -- and with good reason, given the Administration's lousy intel-interpreting track record, and the strange conditions of Sunday's presentation. (More on that, in a second.) But, for what it's worth, Defense Tech has been hearing about these weapons -- especially the "explosively-formed projectiles," or EFPs -- for the last eighteen months. Many of the government's assertions track, at least loosely, to what we've heard.
Soldiers in Iraq were already encountering EFPs -- and the closely-related "shaped-charges" -- back in the summer of '05, when I visited the country.
In the garden, there's a seemingly innocuous copper cylinder, concave on one end, about the size of a gallon of paint. It's called an explosively formed projectile, or EFP, and when it detonates, the concave end blows outward and melts into a bullet-shaped fragment that slices through armor and flesh. "Ten days ago, one of these sons-of-bitches took out an arm of a Humvee driver and both his legs," says Captain Greg Hirschey, the 717th's commander. "I get shivers up my spine every time I see one."
Back then, it was commonly assumed that the EFP-makers were getting some over-the-border help. After all, Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas have been using the weapons against Israeli tanks for some time.
A few months later, David Axe caught word of a particularly nasty EFP in Anbar province: infrared "tripwire-activated IEDs disguised as rocks and apparently employing shaped-charge warheads." That sounds almost exactly like the "Fully Operational, Camouflaged Passive Infrared EFP" that the government, in its Iran presentation, said was found in the Basra area, last May.
Still, does that mean there's a direct, tight connection between the Iranian government and the Iraqi bombers? Terrorists -- especially terrorist bomb-makers -- share best practices, from Colombia to Spain to Lebanon to Iraq. So it's not surprising to see one group's methods mimicked somewhere else. Take those infrared tripwires: they were first used by the Irish Republican Army. And I don't think we're about to send a carrier group to the Celtic Sea.
What's more, when Iranian EFPs were first spotted in Iraq, the bombs were in the hands of Sunni insurgents. At the time, that "seem[ed] to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of, given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq." But now, this looks like terror-makers sharing tricks of the trade, rather some grand, ecumenical alliance.
Or, as Kevin Drum notes, Iran could just be trying to stoke chaos on all sides. "If I were in charge of Iran, it's probably what I'd be doing," he writes. And there's more than just the EFPs to tie Tehran to the conflict in Iraq. Iranian TNT and newly-minted mortars were also trotted out in the American presentation. "The evidence of Iranian meddling in Iraq," McClatchy notes, "is far more compelling than much of the administration's pre-war intelligence about Iraq."
That said, if the case was ironclad, the administration wouldn't be resorting to silly maneuvers like these when it made its case for Iran's involvement:
The officials said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity, so the explosives expert and the analyst, who would normally not speak to the news media, could provide information directly. The analyst's exact title and full name were not revealed to reporters. The officials released a PowerPoint presentation including photographs of the weaponry, but did not allow media representatives to record, photograph or videotape the briefing or the materials on display.
Too much is riding on this evidence for such chicanery. Make the case cleanly, guys. Or don't make it at all.
UPDATE 5:11 PM: As benjoya notes in the comments to a previous post, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace doesn't agree with the administration's assessment.
UPDATE 5:36 PM: Be sure to read Newsweek'scover story, too. But be ready to wince.
Worst. Bomb Squad. Ever.
It takes most people more than a year to graduate from the the U.S. military's explosive ordnance disposal school. With good reason: bombs are beyond dangerous, and defusing them is a whole lot more complicated than "pulling the red wire."
Which is why I cringe every time I hear about some newbie trying to play bomb squad hero. This NPR story, of a beyond-incompetent Iraqi EOD team, has to be the most cringe-worthy case I've heard yet. Because the only thing dumber than randomly shooting at a bomb is randomly kicking it and tossing it around.
Someone, stop these fools, before they get themselves killed.
...an Iraqi explosives team are on the case.
The Iraqi police start shooting at the potential bomb, hoping to set it off. But to no avail. The convoy continues to sit and wait. An hour passes. As Sgt. Lord watches, the Iraqi police move closer to the suspected bomb.
In this case, the first IED turns out to be a fake. To the surprise of the American soldiers, this emboldens the Iraqi police who are now focusing on the second suspected bomb.
"Oh, he kicked it," says an American soldier watching.
"The second one must have been safe," Lord says, "because they went over to it, kicked it over, and then threw it across the road. Ay yi yi."
An hour and a half after first stopping, the convoy moves on. (emphasis mine)
Navy's Deadly New Darts
This is a new piece of Navy hardware: a modified satellite-guided bomb, releasing thousands of darts, each carrying a payload of a powerful chemical called DETA. It sounds fearsome, but it's a new countermine technology for taking out mines in the surf zone which I describe in New Scientisthere.
One of the interesting features is the .50-caliber Venom dart, which hits at relatively low velocity, but can still go through ten to twelve feet of water or two feet of stand and retain its effectiveness. The secret is in the blunt nose: it’s another one of those cavitating designs, a relative of the Russian Shkval and its Iranian cousin that caused so much stir last year. These form a bubble around themselves to reduce water friction, and as a result the Venom dart goes way deeper than a conventional design.
Perhaps more significant is how effective it is against sand – making it a kind of miniature version of Lockheed’s bunker-busting Cavity Penetrator I described in 2005. However, the big difference is that sand can act as a fluid, whereas hard rock – which the Lockheed design is supposed to glide through at high speed - is another matter. My suspicion is that this approach will not work well in solids, and we will see if Lockheed can make good on their claims of increasing penetration thriough rock by a facot of five or more.
The Office of Naval Research design releases the cloud of darts from a thousand feet or so, but they all impact in an area just sixty feet across. That in itself is an indication of the level of precision guidance which is now possible with this technique – one which might be adapated for a other munitions attacking small targets without collateral damage.
The other interesting thing about the Venom dart is this idea of neutralizing ordnance by chemicals means. Of course it’s been tried before, but in this case there seems to be a genuinely effective means of delivering it from a safe stand-off distance. It would not take too much brilliance to design a hand-held launcher for the darts, a useful option for quickly and reliably dealing with mines and IEDs without having to get close to them.
The Navy command responsible for testing bomb-disposal tactics and equipment for the entire U.S. military recently has hosted its first annual "Explosive Ordnance Disposal Top Tech Challenge," a three-day slate of competitions for Navy bomb squads, as I report over at Military.com:
EOD Training and Evaluation Unit Two, part of Naval Expeditionary Combat Command headquartered at this facility near Virginia Beach in southern Virginia, in November welcomed five two-man teams from Navy bases around the world, according to the unit's skipper, Commander Tom Smith, 42.
"It's an absolute uber-challenge," Smith says of the competition, going on to describe grueling events including booby-trap defusing, rappelling, land navigation and a "limpet mine" challenge where bomb technicians must dive into a "cold lake on a cold morning" to find and disable a replica of the kinds of mines terrorists might attach to the bottom of a ship.
"We threw the kitchen sink at them," Smith laughs.
This year, an EOD team from Sigonella, Italy took top honors. Calling the competition a success, Smith adds that his unit is already planning for next years. He says the 2007 Challenge will involve as many as a dozen teams.
P.S. -- Slate has a sweet roundup of Iraq war comics that includes my book WAR FIX as well as cool entries from Brian Wood (DMZ) and Joe Sacco (WAR JUNKIE). Check it out.
Military deaths from roadside bombs have hit an all-time high in recent months: In October, 53 US troops died from improvised explosive devices, while in November, 49 troop deaths were blamed on so-called IEDs -- the second and third highest monthly tolls of the war, official statistics and casualty reports show...
The Joint IED Defeat Organization, which had been hailed as the "Manhattan Project" of the roadside bomb problem, "has been a disaster," said Ed O'Connell, a counter-insurgency specialist at the government-funded Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., who has advised US commanders in Iraq.
For its part, the organization claims some progress. They say that the percentage of bombs that are disarmed or detonated before they can kill or maim has remained "stable and consistent" over the past 18 months, and they say there are now fewer casualties per IED attack...
But officials acknowledged that the number of roadside bombings has "risen dramatically over the last two years," though they would not provide statistics.
That increase has confounded the military and raised questions about whether gathering intelligence on the bombers should be the office's top priority... [T]he IED office told the Globe that it spends 63 percent of its budget on ways to "defeat the device," while only 30 percent goes to attacking "the network" that creates and plants the bombs. The rest of its budget is spent on new training methods for US troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But military specialists say that the Pentagon needs to pay more attention to dissecting the "kill chain" -- the source of the bomb components, who made the bomb, and who planted it.
"We can't even detect their explosives," said Loren Thompson , a military specialist at the Lexington Institution, an Arlington, Va., think tank that supports strong military preparedness. "We don't have the resources to police or survey every road. The IED problem is a case study of how military transformation has failed.
"It sounds like a threat where good intelligence and good surveillance would make a big difference," [h]e said. "But we don't seem to be able to develop those things."
UPDATE 4:40 PM: This seems like a smart, and long-overdue, move.
Recon Planes vs. I.E.D.s
Since the Iraq insurgency began, the U.S. Air Force has been looking for ways to use its planes to fight roadside bombs. Electronic warriors like the EC-130H Compass Calljam frequencies used to set off explosives. Drones patrol highways, looking for new, suspicious mounds along the road. Sometimes they even take out the bomb-planters.
Inside Defense reveals another Air Force tactic: Using ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) aircraft "to help coalition units round up insurgent cells believed to manufacture lethal improvised explosive devices."
Military officials -- working backward using surveillance video -- were able to successfully trace IED placers’ moves using targeting pods and ISR aircraft like the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), Lt. Col. Clint Hinote said during a Nov. 21 telephone interview...
[T]he Air Force has used its surveillance assets to find insurgent IED makers, as opposed to solely working to find or disarm the deadly devices, Hinote said...
“You can have a security camera in the sky,” he said. “We actually have aircraft that have that capability of just taking shots of what’s going on.”
After IEDs detonate in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, Air Force ISR officials begin marking tapes of radar sweeps in an attempt to pinpoint the explosion, he said. They then essentially rewind the tapes, trying to discover any movements in the specific area prior to the blast.
“Maybe you can find the car that was involved and backtrack it to a certain house,” Hinote said. “We’ve got several ISR assets that right now are working on this backtracking plan.
“That’s actually led to a couple of good successes where we’ve rounded up some IED cells,” he added.
The ultimate goal is to track the IED maker to a bomb-making equipment storage location -- “and then even further back,” Hinote said.
Better Bomb-Sniffers?
Terrorists and insurgents still love things that go boom. So it's no surprise that the Defense Department is looking for smarter, more accurate ways to detect explosives. Here are a few research contracts Darpa, the Pentagon's bleeding-edge science agency, recently handed out, to build better bomb-sniffers:
EIC LABORATORIES, INC.
111 Downey Street
Norwood, MA 02062
Phone: (781) 769-9450
PI: Jane Bertone
Topic#: DARPA 06-022
Title: Explosives Detection in Residential Building Ventilation Systems
Abstract: One approach to locating illicit bomb factories in Iraq and Afghanistan is analytical monitoring within the ventilation systems of suspect residential buildings. We are proposing a multiple sensor analyzer that sequentially interrogates individual vents or ducts in such buildings and produces fingerprints characteristic of present target substances. The basic premise of this proposal is to locate sensor probes in key ducts or vents and connect them with fiber cabling to a spectral analyzer located in the attic or roof of the building. This setup would monitor a number of different locations within the building with emission of a wireless alarm report to a regional Tactical Operations Center from all online sensors every 10 to 15 minutes. We will achieve reproducible and selective detection of explosives using novel self-assembled structures that create an inherently uniform pattern, leading to rapid, reproducible manufacturing. The specific instrument we propose to analyze the sensors is a field portable spectrograph, with accompanying fiber optic probes, coupled to an accessory containing the sensing elements. Phase I work will focus on the demonstration of reproducible detection of airborne explosives using the sensors in the presence of potentially confusing interfering substances. The Phase II program will focus on quantifying the extent of fouling of the sensors due to long-term exposure to building air, developing a fieldable self-contained and powered instrument including multiplexed probes and wireless communication, and testing the sensors in mock ventilation systems.
LYNNTECH, INC.
7607 Eastmark Drive, Suite 102
College Station, TX 77840
Phone: (979) 693-0017
PI: Anjal Sharma
Topic#: DARPA 06-022
Title: Inexpensive TSP Based Reagentless Explosive Detector
Abstract: It has become imperative to counter the escalating threat of improvised explosive device attacks on our armed forces personnel deployed in foreign locations by seeking out and neutralizing local terrorist operated bomb making factories. Such factories are typically located in apartment buildings or other large dwellings, where the level of out-gassed explosive marker vapors is so small and buried within numerous confusers such as common chemicals that current detectors cannot be utilized to aid in their location. Therefore, Lynntech proposes to address this critical DOD need by fabricating three novel TSP based colorimetric sensor elements each selective for DNT, TNB and picrate, and incorporating these into an automated bench scale detector to demonstrate our capability to reagentlessly detect and quantify trace vapor phase explosives markers in the presence of common confusers such as household chemicals and matches. During Phase II, we will fabricate additional selective TSP sensor elements for other molecular explosives markers encompassing groups A through D and integrate these into a prototype compact inexpensive explosives detection device which may be placed in the HVAC system of apartment buildings. The device will be tested for reliable operation with low false positives, multiplex-ability and wireless control during Phase II.
MICROSTRUCTURE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
604 West Evergreen
Vancouver, WA 98660
Phone: (360) 694-3704
PI: Joseph Birmingham
Topic#: DARPA 06-022
Title: Low Cost Distributed Explosive Detection Device
Abstract: Automated vapor sampling detectors could potentially provide a detection capability for high vapor pressure explosives such as nitroglycerine (NG). However, for materials such as HMX and RDX, the equilibrium vapor pressures are at least four orders of magnitude lower than conventional trinitro-toluene (TNT) explosives, making detection based on sampling of airborne vapor difficult for all of the explosives without concentration. MicroStructure Technologies (MicroST) has undertaken a mission to develop small, compact, microstructured array detectors for explosive vapors (both nitrogen and peroxide-based materials). The upstream micropillars on the microstructured array have a high surface area and the vapors are adsorbed. The laser energy is coupled by fiber optic into the microarray to desorb a concentrated pulse of concentrated explosive vapor. A Microstructured Array Sampler (MAS) with an inorganic polymer coating as a sensing element to detect the concentrated vapors. The use of the inorganic polymers for explosive detection on an air-sampling microarray for confirmation is innovative. The key innovation of the proposed approach is to use a chip-based laser to selectively desorb a concentrated energetic sample onto sensing polymers coated onto a microarray. Lastly, the alarm signal from the microarray is sent wirelessly to reveal the type of explosive detected.
Terrorists Planned Fuel-Air Attack
A while back –- March ‘04 -- I noted the risk from terrorists using thermobaric or fuel-air explosives. This type of blast is much more effective at destroying buildings from the inside than normal (‘condensed’) explosives. One factor is the greater energy release from explosive mix that takes oxygen from the air, but the other is the sustained impulse that a fuel-air blast produces. Many structures rely on gravity for their structural strength -– arches are a good example –- or have very limited ability to withstand a horizontal load. A fuel-air blast has long enough duration to cause such structures to lose their integrity, and basically they just fall apart.
Terrorists have known about these weapons for some time; five years ago the IRA were reported to be collaborating with FARC in Colombia to develop a fuel-air device, with every possibility that the ‘recipe’ would be shared with other groups.
Last month the reporting restrictions were lifted on the trial in Britain of terror suspect Dhiren Barot. His key plan was reportedly called the ‘Gas Limos Project’ in which limousines packed with cylinders of propane and explosives were to be placed in car parks underneath crowded buildings. Barot has pleaded guilty to the charges against him.
What’s interesting here is the use of gas cylinders as well as normal explosives. The 1993 plot to blow up the World Trade Center using 1300 lbs of a urea/nitric acid composition failed. A fuel-air device might be much more effective. (And indeed, out there on the fringe there really are people who think the WTC was destroyed by such devices ) However it has to be said that engineering an effective fuel-air blast is a major technical challenge. Simply sticking some explosives around a propane tank might get you an impressive fireball but it would not necessarily generate much of a blast –- this requires the gas and air to be thoroughly mixed in exactly the correct ratio over a large volume and then ignited correctly.
Meanwhile fiction struggles to catch up -- BBC TV series Spooks recently featured an episode with terrorists attempting to use a thermobaric bomb in London.
The technology may be new, but the general idea goes way back. A group of religious fanatics aimed to destroy the British Houses of Parliament and wipe out the entire government on November 5th, 1605. The blast was to be provided by 36 barrels of gunpowder stowed in the cellars below the House. The plot was betrayed, but date is marked annually with bonfires and fireworks in England –- “Remember, remember the 5th of November”
This Washington Post Magazine story, on "The Bomb Squad," is one of the best reads you'll get in the mainstream press on the reality of the counter-bomb fight in Iraq.
There's only one, teeny-tiny problem with the piece: It's not really about a "bomb squad," or explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit, at all. Nobody is asked to defuse any bombs. Instead, the story centers around what appears to be a group of combat engineers -- EOD's blood rivals. These guys go combing roads for improvised explosives and, if they have any brains at all, call in EOD once the bombs are found.
In either case, the story is well worth checking out. Here's a snippet:
And this is where the whole expedition turns . . . well, into a "Wizard of Oz" moment for me. Because as I peer through the haze of the Iraqi noon, the Buffalo's claw ponderously raking the grass beside the road, I realize that the heart of the Pentagon's program for defeating IEDs [improvised explosive devices] is: 1) buy some armored trucks with big windows; 2) send young soldiers out to drive up next to bombs; 3) investigate with a phone truck [which is what the author says the Buffalo reminds him of].
As Tate points out later: "I've seen tanks destroyed. I've seen Bradleys destroyed . . . There's only so much armor can do."
Fortunately, this particular wired rock turns out to be an irrigation pump. After another hour or so, I'm dropped off at a nearby patrol base.
Fifteen minutes later, Tate's RG-31 nearly runs over an IED.
McGorvin -- dubbed "the Jedi master" by his fellow soldiers for his ability to, as they put it, "detect ordnance" -- tells me about it the next day as he fidgets on a torn couch behind the TOC. He explains that he sensed the bomb a mile before he reached it -- noticing first the grinning face of a taxi driver who squatted down behind his cab to key a Motorola phone. A few minutes later as the convoy rumbled through a small town, McGorvin felt it again outside a cluster of mud wattle shacks, their yards suspiciously empty.
Then, all at once, his RG-31 passed a mound of dirt with a cone of rusty metal showing through its side. McGorvin's gaze locked on a sliver of blue plastic tucked behind the mound. "I got something!" he yelled. "I don't know what it is, but it's got a cellphone on it!"
The RG-31's armor wouldn't protect McGorvin standing in his gunner's nest, so, as radios barked and the convoy scattered, he tucked his thighs against his chest and squatted.
"McGorvin -- good looking," Tate shouted as their truck finally jolted to a stop outside the bomb's blast radius.
WWI Mine-Mashers to Iraq
The armed services are spending billions and billions to figure out fancy new ways to stop improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. But the latest trick is an oldie -- dating back to World War I -- and couldn't be less high tech.
The contraptions are called mine rollers -- sets of wheels mounted in front of a vehicle, basically. When they roll over a mine or a pressure-activated IED, the wheels trigger the bomb. Because the vehicle is some distance behind the rollers, much of the bomb blast wave does not reach the vehicle, dramatically reducing the damage. And the vehicle lives to see another day. The Marine Corps just bought 150 sets from General Dynamics, according to Defense Industry Daily.
This idea sounds glaringly obvious. So you might wonder why it took the military more than 3 years to put the rollers up. In fact, the idea of a mine roller originated in 1918, to help nascent tanks deal with the anti-tank mines of that era. Many of the earliest IEDs in Iraq were built with anti-tank mines. Why didn't anybody in the Army Engineer School, for instance, make the connection?
Chalk some of it up to military bureaucracy. When it comes to mine-clearance, combat engineers and explosive ordnance disposal techs sometimes have overlapping lines of responsibility. (Which helps fuel an often-bitter rivalry.) At times, who exactly is supposed to develop bomb- and mine-fighting gear has been a blurry question, as well. The Counter-IED Task Force is now supposed to be in charge. But we'll see.
There are several legitimate concerns with the mine rollers that I am not going to mention here. However, my answer to these concerns are: If the insurgents do that, it would make their IEDs more detectable. Moreover, the standoff will interfere with aiming.
A friend and I were working on a similar concept, a Humvee roller attachment. However, we could not find a machinist to build our prototype. Now that I am deployed, we could not continue our commercial venture. One feature of our design was that it was telescoping, meaning that we can vary the distance of the rollers to the vehicle. We can change the distance to respond to changes in IED tactics. Maybe General Dynamics will incorporate the feature into their next run of mine rollers, too.
In what was dubbed "Operation Kaboom," every purchase the cops made was legal - and aroused little suspicion - even driving their simulated truck bomb throughout the city.
Although the two cops had no specialized knowledge of bomb-making, they were able manufacture an explosive more powerful than the one used in the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
"We did it with no difficulty whatsoever," said [Richard] Falkenrath, the NYPD's top anti-terror cop, who testified at a congressional hearing yesterday and disclosed the making of the bomb. When the operation was complete, the officers drove the simulated bomb around the city's bridges and tunnels, sources said. They were not detected.
There is one, tiny bit of good news in this otherwise skin-crawling story: When the cops tried to buy 2,450 pounds of ammonium nitrate in upstate Rensselaer County, it "aroused some suspicion from the owner of the distribution plant, who contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms following the purchase. The ATF launched an investigation, but the NYPD notified them that it was an undercover operation."
Iraqi TV Ad: Stop Your Suicide Bombing
Coming soon to Iraqi TV: million-dollar, sixty-second, public service announcements, featuring "exploding cars, flying Matrix-style stuntmen and... messages like 'Don't Suicide Bomb.'"
Newsweek reports from "an industrial block in downtown LA [turned] into a busy Baghdad square" -- the scene for a 120-camera shoot, designed to capture simulated carnage in the "frozen-in-time feeling" of "The Matrix." The spot is supposed to persuade wannabe insurgents to put down their IEDs. Never mind the fact that "the cost of owning a TV is often prohibitive for the average Iraqi."
At least 60 extras dressed in hijabs, kaffiyehs and polyester-wool blend slacks were herded onto the set to simulate an average shopping day. But there was hardly any Arabic spoken on this Baghdad street. Spanish, Punjabi and even Italian could be heard as extras gathered around the Kraft services table to munch on chips and guacamole. When asked if he is Iraqi, Bidkar Ramos, an extra on the set, laughs. "No, I'm Chinese and Mexican,” he says. “Like most of these people, I'm just a look-alike."
Onlookers were later asked to stand back as the pyrotechnic crew blew up a poor old Yugo coupe and stunt men and women, padded under their Arab garb, were thrust into the air with ropes and pulleys to simulate the impact of a bomb exploding...
This pricey and unorthodox attempt to subdue the violence is backed by a group of mystery donors. "I call them an independent, non-governmental group of scholars, non political people," says Plotkin. "Some may live in Iraq, some may live abroad. For a variety of different reasons—from safety concerns to wanting the focus to remain on the issue itself, they decided to remain anonymous."
One of the nice things about being editor of Defense Tech is that people occasionally show up at your apartment with military robots. Take last Friday, for example, when Bradley DeRoos and Alex Gizis dragged one of their brand-new BomBots into my dining room.
600 of the machines have already shipped to troops in Iraq. Another 1800 are being built. And if the BomBots look more like toy trucks than military-grade hardware well, there's a reason for that. That's exactly what the things are.
Gizis spent several years designing bad-ass digital controllers for RC cars -- the fastest of their kind, working in the 2.4 GHz band. They transmit drivers' orders in a hurry. And the controllers send all kinds of telemetry data back, like engine temperature and battery strength.
It all worked so well, Gizis figured the military might be interested in some cheap, remote-controlled bomb-spotters. The current crop of ordinance-disposal robots cost $100,000 or more, he knew. Even the smaller, dumbed-down Marcbots, used on route patrol, can run about $15,000 each. Maybe, Gizis thought, he could come up with something cheaper.
So Gizis started playing around with Traxxas E-maxx RC trucks, to see if they could do the job. At the same time, some Air Force Research Laboratory engineers (working with the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division) were also fiddling with E-maxxes, to handle the same duties. But they couldn't get the radios to work.
Eventually, everyone was brought together by the National Center for Defense Robotics. And within a couple of months, the first BomBots were being sent off to Iraq for testing.
At 15 pounds, 22 inches high, the miniature truck isn't exactly bomb-proof. It doesn't have to be be. At $5,000 a pop -- dirt cheap, by military standards -- the bot becomes a sound investment even if it's blown sky-high after the fourth or fifth use. You could even imagine the BomBots keeping up with Humvees on route patrol, since the machines have a top speed of 35 miles per hour and a range of 1500 feet.
Now, Gizis claims the trucks are also going to be used for bomb disposal, as well as bomb spotting. And that's a little harder to imagine -- despite the nifty, six-inch loading bay, big enough to dump off a C4 brick. EOD techs tend to be pretty particular about where they place their bang. The BomBots don't have the dexterity to pull off much precision. But for a souped-up RC truck, the machines are pretty cool.
Who's that at the door now, I wonder?
Contact Bombs in Iraq
Iraqi insurgents are trying out a new tactic. "The newest method of triggering [an improvised explosive] is a contact strip laid across part of the pavement," says Fox News' Rick Leventhal, who's in Iraq.
"It can be inside plastic tubing. When a tire hits it and the wires inside make contact — boom. This method doesn't require the cowards to be on scene, but it's totally random. Any local on the road could be the next victim."
iRobots Sell, But Who's Buying?
Someone must be using them, I guess. Otherwise, why would Naval Sea Systems Command buy another $26 million worth of iRobot's explosive-disposal machines? But I've never met a bomb squad technician who actually bothered with one of the things. Too flimsy, they all say. Too hard to operate.
The Baghdad Bomb Squad used their iRobots to decorate their shop. Not far away, at the U.S. military's central robot depot for Iraq, the iRobots sat on shelves, serenely gathering dust, while Foster-Miller's Talon robots would come back, scarred and in pieces, after being chewed up by a bomb.
Foster-Miller, though, doesn't have the PR megaphone that iRobot does. It doesn't have a cute, little household machine to go along with its battlefield models. And when you go to military trade shows, you only see Foster-Miller sporadically. iRobot always seems to have a booth. Maybe there's a connection, somewhere in there, to that big sale?
A shortage of Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts in Iraq means that engineers and infantry often end up tackling Improvised Explosive Devices themselves.
New equipment including tougher vehicles and simple ground robots make this possible, as I explain in an article in the April National Defense Magazine:
Armored vehicles originally designed to clear mines are used to sweep roads of bombs. Patrols travel inside the protective bubbles of sophisticated radio jammers that intercept the signals that detonate explosives. And engineers are refining the use of small ground robots to identify and destroy IEDs.
UPDATE 9:49 AM: Noah here. As you can imagine, the guys who spend a year training to become bomb squad technicians aren't exactly thrilled by the newbies who think they handle their jobs, just because of a few new toys. This isn't just a matter of guarding turf (although there is some of that, for sure). There's a pretty major safety issue involved here, too.
Quick example: a group of combat engineers near Baghdad were all fired up about their new, bomb-grabbing Buffalo armored vehicle, which they used to sift through roadside junk piles for IEDs. These guys would dig up an explosive with the Buffalo's spindly claw. And then, they'd be so proud of what they found, they'd want to snap a quick picture of their prize. So they'd use the claw to bring the bomb right up to the Buffalo's cab. And then, the IED would go off. A bad thing, of course. And the kind of thing that happens when folks aren't properly trained in bomb-handling.
UPDATE 10:07 AM: Of course, being an EOD pro doesn't make you bomb-proof. In an incident I barely missed, UK Captain Peter Norton lost a leg and part of an arm to an IED. Yesterday, he was awarded one of the British military's highest honors, the George Cross. Only 21 others have received it since 1945. His citation reads, in part:
"Captain Norton was the second-in-command of the US Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell (CEXC) based in the outskirts of Baghdad. The unit has been in the forefront of counter Improvised Explosive Device (IED) operations and is plays a vital role in the collection and analysis of weapons intelligence.
At 1917 hours on 24 July 2005, a three vehicle patrol from B Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Regiment of the Georgia National Guard was attacked by a massive command initiated IED in the Al Bayaa district near Baghdad. The ensuing explosion resulted in the complete destruction of a 'Humvee' patrol vehicle and the deaths of four US personnel. Due to the significance of the attack, a team from CEXC, commanded by Captain Norton, was tasked immediately to the scene. On arrival, Captain Norton was faced with a scene of carnage and the inevitable confusion which is present in the aftermath of such an incident. He quickly took charge and ensured the safety of all the coalition forces present. A short while later he was briefed that a possible command wire had been spotted in the vicinity of the explosion site. With a complete understanding of the potential hazard to himself and knowing that the insurgents had used secondary devices before in the particularly dangerous part of Iraq, Captain Norton instructed his team and the US forces present in the area to remain with their vehicle while he alone went forward to confirm whether a command wire IED was present.
A short while later, an explosion occurred and Captain Norton sustained a traumatic amputation of his left leg and suffered serious blast and fragmentation injuries to his right leg, arms and lower abdomen. When his team came forward to render first aid, he was conscious, lucid and most concerned regarding their safety. He had correctly deduced that he had stepped on a victim operated IED and there was a high probability that further devices were present. Before allowing them to render first aid, he instructed his team on which areas were safe and where they could move. Despite having sustained grievous injuries he remained in command and coolly directed the follow-up actions. It is typical of the man that he ignored his injuries and regarded the safety of his men a paramount as they administered life saving first aid to him. It is of note that a further device was found less than ten metres away and rendered safe the following day. Captain Norton's prescience and clear orders in the most difficult circumstances undoubtedly prevented further serious injury or loss of life.
(Big ups: JQP, LB)
I.E.D. Task Force's Growing Pains
Tomorrow's Newsweek has a recap of the IED threat in Iraq that's well worth a read. Most of the elements of Michael Hastings' story will be familiar to regular Defense Tech readers: the article opens with Capt. Greg Hirschey, the head of the Baghdad Bomb Squad, moves quickly to the tragic passing of Staff Sgt. Johnnie Mason, and then goes on to cover Warlock jammers, shaped charges, infrared triggers, and the like. But there are a few, choice, behind-the-scenes tidbits, on the creation of the Pentagon's Joint IED Task Force, that I haven't seen anywhere before:
The civilian leadership of DoD agreed and let it be known that money would be no obstacle. A new Joint IED Task Force was duly convened under Army leadership—and immediately bogged down in bureaucracy. The first meeting was chaired by an Army two-star general and attended by a Navy two-star admiral, many one-star Army and Air Force generals, and "more colonels than you could count," according to a participant who requested anonymity because he was discussing a secret meeting. About an hour and a half was spent discussing the transfer to the Army of four bomb-sniffing dogs belonging to the Air Force. The cost of flying the dogs to Iraq was $35,000, but "at the end of that time, there was not a soul in the room who could say, 'I will give you the money'," a participant recalled. It was a harbinger. "We were hamstrung from the beginning by an inability to actually do anything," said another participant in the meeting. (Pentagon spokesman Whitman says that "our efforts against IEDs grew as the threat grew.")
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was frustrated by the slow progress, according to a knowledgeable official who requested anonymity because he was divulging sensitive matters. Wolfowitz hoped to use interservice rivalry to spur some competition. The Air Force had begun a "Project Eyes" to fly a plane, equipped with sensors, over Iraq looking for buried munitions. The equipment was sensitive—it kept overheating over the desert, forcing the plane to retreat to cooler altitudes—but it showed that hidden caches could be found. Wolfowitz was so fed up with what he saw as the Army's inertia that he asked Air Force Secretary James Roche to brief the rival branch. "Paul wanted to shame the Army into action," says an official involved in the operation who declined to be identified.
UPDATE 03/20/06 2:12 PM: If you squint really, rrrrreeeealllly hard, you can see this site cited in the print edition of the Newsweek story.
The Enemy is Me
Last summer, a U.S. Colonel in Baghdad told me that I was America's enemy, or very close to it. For months, I had been covering the U.S. military's efforts to deal with the threat of IEDs, improvised explosive devices. And my writing, he told me, was going too far -- especially this January 2005 Wired News story, in which I described some of the Pentagon's more exotic attempts to counter these bombs.
None of the material in the story -- the stuff about microwave blasters or radio frequency jammers -- was classified, he admitted. Most of it had been taken from open source materials. And many of the systems were years and years from being fielded. But by bundling it all together, I was doing a "world class job of doing the enemy's research for him, for free." So watch your step, he said, as I went back to my ride-alongs with the Baghdad Bomb Squad -- the American soldiers defusing IEDs in the area.
Today, I hear that the President and the Pentagon's higher-ups are trotting out the same argument. "News coverage of this topic has provided a rich source of information for the enemy, and we inadvertently contribute to our enemies' collection efforts through our responses to media interest," states a draft Defense Department memo, obtained by Inside Defense. "Individual pieces of information, though possibly insignificant taken alone, when aggregated provide robust information about our capabilities and weaknesses."
In other words, Al Qaeda hasn't discovered how to Google, yet. Don't help 'em out.
This was taken to ridiculous extremes yesterday by President Bush, who said:
Earlier this year, a newspaper published details of a new anti-IED technology that was being developed. Within five days of the publication -- using details from that article -- the enemy had posted instructions for defeating this new technology on the Internet. We cannot let the enemy know how we're working to defeat him.
Folks, that doesn't pass the laugh test. This technology, Ionatron's Joint IED Neutralizer, hasn't even been shipped to the field -- and may never get there. So insurgents are posting instructions on how to beat a device that they've never seen? Based on a few, vague paragraphs in the L.A. Times? Yeah, right.
After years of relatively small investments, the U.S. is spending several billion dollars of our public money to try to stop roadside bombs. 40 American soldiers are dying every month, because of these IEDs. The public has a right to know how that money is being spent, and how those soldiers are being protected. Period. And this attempt to demonize the media for handmade bombs is just a way to keep folks from asking why more wasn't done sooner to deal with the IED threat.
Does that mean there shouldn't be any secrets in the anti-IED world? Of course not. Operational specifics about key counter-bomb technologies and tactics should be tightly held; otherwise, soldiers can get killed. That's why I kept such details out of my Baghdad Bomb Squad story. That's why David Axe has done the same on his many Iraq trips.
But there's a huge difference between disclosing key details, and not allowing any information out whatsoever about the Iraq war's most important fight. Now, who's the one crossing the line?
I.E.D. Answer: New Roads?
I've spoken to a couple of company commanders in Iraq who say they don't have much of a problem with roadside bombs. The big reason why: they avoid the main streets in their neighborhoods, travelling where their enemies aren't.
The Army is seeking $167 million in military construction funds as part of the Pentagon's soon-to-be detailed $65.3 billion supplemental spending request for fiscal year 2006 to pave roads capable of supporting two-way traffic, complete with shoulders, drainage structures and interchanges to connect with existing supply routes, according to a draft version of the request.
“Failure to provide these routes will result in continued exposure of U.S. and coalition forces as well as Iraqi non-combatants to unacceptable insurgent threats to include IED and vehicle borne IED and direct fire exposure,” states the draft budget document obtained by InsideDefense.com and set to be delivered to Congress soon....
There have been approximately 28,000 IED incidents in Iraq between April 2003 and November 2005, according to Jan. 24 briefing slides prepared by Multi-National Force-Iraq.
Iraq, Behind the Bombs
We read all the time about the American military effort to stop handmade bombs in Iraq. But we don't know much about the insurgents who build and plant them. Greg Grant, who just got back from Iraq, has one of the most detailed looks yet into the IED supply chain. Here's a snippet. But be sure to read the whole story, in this month's Defense Technology International.
According to U.S. military intelligence, more than 100 cells operate in Iraq. Most limit attacks to roadways and neighborhoods near where the cell members live. Cells advertise their technical skills on the Internet, posting streaming video of IED attacks to jihadist web sites. The most highly skilled IED cells operate as a package and hire themselves out to the larger insurgent networks on a contract basis, changing affiliations for more money.
While ideology motivates many guerrilla fighters in Iraq, some officers believe the financial motivation behind insurgent attacks has been underestimated. “You get a disaffected guy who is making $100 a month and you tell him go place this IED and I’ll give you $300, and if you blow something up we’ll give you a $700 bonus, and that’s a pretty dramatic reward,” says Army Lt. Col. Shawn Weed, a military intelligence officer in Baghdad…
“Payday is the beginning of the month,” says Army Lt. Col. Ross Brown, who commands a cavalry squadron in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3ACR) operating south of Baghdad. “We can track it on a calendar; he’s buying IEDs on this date, then he’s building them, now he’s putting them out on the roads, then they’re blowing up and then he’s out of money and munitions and he starts over...”
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was saturated with weapons plants and munitions depots. U.S. intelligence indicates that after the regime fell, former officials moved large quantities of munitions into pre-selected caches, many south of Baghdad, from which insurgents draw explosives for IEDs. Army Capt. Ben Crombe, an intelligence officer in 3ACR, says there is a single supplier for many of these cells.
The suppliers provide explosive material to locations across the capital. Components are assembled at well-concealed bomb factories and moved from areas likely to be searched by American patrols to holding areas until the device is emplaced. Because of the frequency of U.S. raids on suspected insurgent hideouts, IEDs are kept in what the military calls “rolling weapons caches”— cars with false bottoms or trunks loaded with explosives that blend in with the thousands of vehicles on Iraq’s crowded city streets.
Individual cells have a specific signature and follow a pattern, Funk says, such as the time of day they carry out IED attacks and where they place bombs, while different cells have access to different types and sizes of munitions. Most of the bombs are unique in construction because the bomb maker is forced to use materials at hand.
This story in the current Atlantic has a solution I hadn't seen before. The idea, from Gen. Joseph Votel, who headed the IED task force until recently, is to have troops stop riding through Baghdad or Ramadi on Humvees, and start walking the streets.
The growing use of IEDs is forcing America's military strategists to rethink centuries of military doctrine holding that in warfare, mobility equals dominance. Votel told me that given the success that IEDs have had against America's fleet of motor vehicles, the Pentagon may need to switch to more foot patrols. An intelligence analyst working on the IED problem agreed, saying, "The answer to the IEDs is to leave the vehicles. It's obvious. It's the only choice."
Really? I don't know much about infantry tactics. But I do know a soldier who was killed by a jury-rigged bomb. He was one his feet, not in a Humvee. Same goes for the British explosives specialist who lost limbs to an IED.
But the vulnerability isn't even the big issue. Coverage is. The Army equivalent on the cop walking the beat works fine, if you've got lots and lots of cops in a very small area. In Iraq, there are 150,000 or so soldiers and marines trying to control a place the size of California. That means each patrol has to cover a really wide area -- too wide, really, to walk. Driving is the only way.
Besides, as the Atlantic notes, more foot patrols "would expose U.S. soldiers to other risks, including snipers. And the December detonation of an IED in Fallujah, killing ten Marines on foot patrol, shows that soldiers will remain vulnerable to IEDs whether on foot or behind the wheel."
Next...
Laugh Off Those Bombs
I convoyed to Ramadi with the Army's 46th Engineer Battalion. My driver was a young soldier who'd fought the Mahdi Army in Al Kut two years ago and was back for his second tour. Before SP-ing ("Start Point"), a lieutenant briefed everyone on the latest Improvised Explosive Device threat.
It seems an insurgent cell out here in Al Anbar has been building sophisticated IR tripwire-activated IEDs disguised as rocks and apparently employing shaped-charge warheads -- hardly improvised at all, if you ask me. Three or four of these things have gone off in the last month, inflicting a number of casualties. Normally in a briefing like this the presenter would detail any countermeasures, but this time he just went, "Umm ... " since there are no countermeasures to an IED like that. You can't tell it from another rock and you can't jam it.
This wasn't my first convoy. Nor was it the first time I've heard scary briefings on insurgent super-weapons. Still, I admit I was a little unnerved. But the 46th troopers just grimaced and shrugged. What are you gonna do?
We rolled out two hours late due to a broken-down Humvee. It was a two-hour drive to Ramadi, and my driver and his crew passed the time munching Chips Ahoy cookies and joking on the intercom. They run these missions almost every day against an evolving range of threats. There are only so many precautions they can take; after that's it's up to God. "Inshalla," my Arab friends would say: "God willing." The non-believers in the crowd can take comfort in the knowledge that, statistically, they're highly likely to survive any given mission.
Still – shaped-charge IEDs disguised as rocks?!
--David Axe
"Aerial IED," Part Three
Are insurgents in Iraq making homemade explosives that can "leap into the air" and hit helicopters? A leading general says yes. The Pentagon's anti-IED (improvised explosive device) task force disagrees. And the Secretary of the Army -- well, he's not quite sure either way.
Now, an intelligence source weighs in, telling Defense Tech that the "aerial IED" threat is all hype -- no matter what the general said. "Honest to God, there hasn't been a single anti-helo IED discovered anywhere in Southwest Asia," the source notes. "The bad guys are so successful at downing them with small arms fire they have no incentive to adopt needlessly complex anti-helo mines or IEDs. There might be one or two out there, but we haven't heard anything about it."
I don't know about you, but I had no one idea there were anti-helicopter mines until this whole flap started. Defense Update helps educate me, with a description of this one Bulgarian-made helo-hunter. There are manyothers.
AHM-200-1... is activated by... acoustic and radar Doppler shift signatures... at a distance of of 100 m... The mine uses two warheads, an explosive formed projectile and augmented by a second TNT bar charge distributing 17kg of steel ball fragments. The mine can be activated for periods up to 30 days. The mine is placed on a stand permitting general orientation of the sensors and charges in the direction of potential threat. The control unit uses a signal processor to process the acoustic signals and determine activation parameters. Activation, neutralization and explosion by Radio control from a range of up to 2,000 meters is optional in model AHM-200-1RC. The mine will explode when attempts for moving, tampering or disassembly during its activation phase.
"Aerial IED" Denied... Kinda, Sorta
It's not every day that the Defense Department goes out of its way to say publicly that a general is full of it. But that's what appears to be going on now.
On Monday, Defense News ran a story by Greg Grant which said that "insurgents are attacking U.S. helicopters in Iraq with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that leap into the air and detonate when an aircraft passes nearby."
The source: Brig. Gen. Edward Sinclair, commander of the Army’s Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.
Almost immediately, there was pushback to Grant's piece. But not to the substance of what he -- and, by extension, Gen. Sinclair -- said. To the fact that such sensitive info was being disclosed. (That kind of thing tends to happen when you're writing about IEDs. I was accused of being an agent of the Iraqi insurgency for thisWired News article on bomb-stopping technologies.)
Now, however, the military is saying those "aerial IEDs" don't exist. That Grant and Gen. Sinclair were basically wrong.
But that attempt to clarify things was almost instantly muddied by Army Secretary Francis Harvey, in an interview with Voice of America.
To my knowledge we, we have not, I don't know if we've seen, we may have seen one of those. But to my knowledge we have not seen a lot of those so far, jumping IEDs.
In Iraq, it's not uncommon for Americans to fly from the Green Zone in Baghdad to the military headquarters at Camp Victory, just a few miles away. That's the danger handmade bombs along the road represent.
Insurgents, who place these aerial IEDs along known flight paths, trigger them when American helicopters come along at the typical altitude of just above the rooftops. The devices shoot 50 feet into the air, and a proximity fuze touches off a warhead that sprays metal fragments, said Brig. Gen. Edward Sinclair, commander of the Army’s Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.
The bomb-builders may be obtaining radio-guided proximity fuzes from old Iraqi anti-aircraft and artillery shells and mortar rounds.
Sinclair said these aerial IEDs have been used against multiple U.S. helicopters. He declined to say whether such IEDs had damaged any aircraft.
The new weapon is one way insurgents are taking on Army aircraft, which come under fire between 15 and 20 times a month, Sinclair said. Other methods include small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and advanced shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
“The enemy is adaptive,” Sinclair said. “They make changes in the way they fight; they respond to new flying tactics.”
The AP is reporting that "a U.S. military helicopter crashed north of the Iraqi capital Monday - the third American chopper to go down in 10 days - killing the two crew members. A resident said he saw the smoke trail of a missile before the aircraft plunged to the ground."
SSG Johnnie Mason, RIP
Staff Sergeant Johnnie Mason was smiling when I met him, a few days after he had dodged death. He was part of an Army bomb squad team in Mahmudiyah, not far from Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, stuffed underneath a set of corpses, detonated just feet away from him in mid-July. Only his kevlar bomb suit -- and a quick duck behind a mound of dirt -- kept him alive.
If Mason was bothered by the experience, he didn't show it. "All I've got is a little short-term memory loss. There are four roads on post -- I keep getting lost," he laughed.
But he had enough wherewithall to get back to work, he promised his commanding officer. Mason eyes grew big, and he cracked a toothy grin, when he got the okay.
I shook my head in wonder at Mason's easy-going bravery then.
Now, I'm cradling my head in my hand, after getting this message from Sergeant Jon Ferraro, from the "Baghdad Bomb Squad."
On 19 December 2005 @ 23:30, my team leader SSG Johnnie V. Mason was killed in the line of duty in Al Mahmudiyah, Iraq. We were working on an IED in the median of a road, when a possible secondary IED was found in our safe area. SSG Johnnie Mason responded immediately to the secondary and took immediate actions on the device. He was trying to safe the device when it detonated...killing him instantly from the explosion (at exactly 23:30). He saved at least 4 soldiers that night who were within feet of the device. SSG Johnnie Mason is a fallen brother. A brother in arms. An EOD brother. A husband to his wife Brook and a father to his 2 step children: Ashley (18) and Adam (16). He will not be forgotten. His loss will not be in vain.
He was my team leader. He was my NCO. He was my best friend. He was my brother. I have never gotten so close to someone in such a short time. I first met Johnnie when I got to Ft.Campbell, KY back in January of this year. I found out he was going to be my team leader for Iraq back in March. Ever since then we have been inseparable and we've had a brothers bond.
We were Team 8 "Jokers". When we rolled out on an incident, everyone knew who we were. Johnnie was a joker. He's the guy that makes everyone laugh and smile. Everyone liked him or loved him. He was always in a good mood and made the best out of every situation. He was cool under pressure and was an amazing team leader. He taught me alot as a person, as an EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] tech...and soon to be husband. We had fun on every incident we ran. We ran safely, as fast as possible, and held high standards as a team. Everywhere we went on post, someone would say hey to Johnnie from the lowest ranking private to the Brigade Commander. Everyone knew him.
I ask that everyone take a moment of silence and pray for his family and friends during this horrible time. I ask God to keep them strong and safe during this time of Christmas. I ask that you forward this to all the EOD techs you know and the friends and loved ones of his.
Thank you and God bless,
SGT Jonathan M. Ferraro
717th Ordnance Company (EOD)
UPDATE 12/22 8:52 AM: More on Johnnie here and here. If you're interested in sending condolences or flowers, e-mail me.
From the AP and NPR reports, you'd think that the the big deal about the military's revamped IED training course was new, mock buildings that the government put up for the class. You'd be wrong.
I went down to the military's bomb squad school over the summer, while those buildings were being constructed. (Here's a picture, right) I talked to the guys who are running the IED program. The new structures are the least important part of the change that's going on in bomb squad training. Think of it like the movies: The scenery matters, sure. But what really counts is the acting, and the plot. Here's what I wrote about the school for Wired:
When [a bomb technician] was deployed to the Balkans in the late 1990s, his main task was to sweep unexploded ordnance from battlefields and firing ranges once the action was over. He followed a cold war playbook - when to get the tools out, when to just blow something up. But that playbook only works when you're up against mass-produced bombs. Guerrillas in Iraq cobble together weapons from whatever they can find. A bombmaker in Mosul might use dynamite and a timer from a washing machine. One in Baghdad lashes artillery shells to a motorcycle battery and a cordless telephone. Insurgent cells swap tactics on Web sites, and when American forces catch on, the terrorists move to newer tactics...
The ever-shifting conflict is forcing bomb squads to develop new, more improvisational tactics. On the red clay ranges of the military's EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] school in Niceville, Florida, Marine gunnery sergeant Eric Slachter teaches the next generation of bomb-disposal troops. His syllabus: There is no syllabus. "The basic classes here, they're all about following procedure. This is an advanced course - you think on your feet. You've got a brain, some experience. Now use it," he says. "We'll take it from the headlines, what killed a GI. We'll make that device. And we'll learn to defeat it."
Not too long ago, IEDs were treated as almost an afterthought during explosives training. They were the pipe bombs that 16 year-olds left in school libraries -- kid's stuff, really. Real men handled roomfuls of grenades, or thousand-pound building-killers.
Some of the feaux-buildings at Eglin reflect that history. There's a mock library there, in fact, with books and everything. But that's a relic of the past, not a pointer to the future. Which is why it's particularly silly for the press to focus in on it.
(Full disclosure: NPR's Phillip Davis interviewed me for his story on the IED school. I tried to tell him all this. But I didn't make it into his piece. Some might say, then, that this post is sour grapes. But really, I'm just sour about the point of the story being missed.)
Troops Get New Jammers
One of the few reliable methods the U.S. military has for stopping improvised bombs are radio frequency jammers, which stop the bombs from being remotely triggered.
I've mentioned the jammers -- specifically, the Warlock family of jammers -- a whole bunch of times on the site. But there are others, too. Raytheon, for example, just got another $15.5 million for its IED Countermeasure Equipment ("ICE") systems. If I'm doing the math right -- always a questionable proposition -- that means another 1200-1300 jammers for the troops.
Back in April, Copley News Service notes, Lt. Gen. James Mattis told Congress that "the Marines are sending 1,066 of the new devices to Iraq and plan to buy another 2,500. The Army is purchasing 3,000." In August, the Joint IED Defeat Task Force shifted "$48 million to buy 6,246 [ICE] kits," according to Inside the Army.
"The device is about the size of a large gym bag," the El Paso Times noted in August.
It is a rectangular metal box with switches, fans and connectors on its face and sides. It takes about 15 minutes to install in a vehicle and it runs off the vehicle's power system.... The ICE device can be programmed from a laptop in the field, and it was designed with space inside the chassis for new equipment. The electronics are modular and easily replaced in the field. The simple design also makes it relatively cheap to manufacture.
Really cheap. "At $12,000 each, [ICE] is one-third the price of the Warlock device," Copley notes. Which is one reason so many are being sent into the field.
But while the jammers are useful tools, they can't guarantee soldiers and marines' safety. Far from it.
In a little more than a month, at least three marine bomb squad members have been killed by IEDs -- a huge loss for a community that's only a few hundred people big. It's safe to assume that all three had some sort of jammer. But the bombs that killed them, I'm told, were triggered by motion-detectors. No radio frequency jammer in the world could have stopped them from going off.
Pentagon Skimps on IED Defense?
It certainly sounds big league: tens of millions of dollars and the promise of a modern-day "Manhattan Project" to figure out how to stop improvised bombs. And the need couldn't be greater, of course; just on Saturday, another six soldiers and marines were killed in Iraq by jury-rigged explosives.
But is the Pentagon really doing all it can to stop the weapons responsible for more than half of the war's 17,000 American casualties? It sure doesn't seem that way. Consider this story, from Defense Technology International.
The 1940s Manhattan Project is estimated to have cost $20 billion. In Fiscal 2006, the Navy plans to spend just $15 million within ONR [Office of Naval Research] on its new drive, with another $15 million to be spread among the Navy's five affiliated research centers: Pennsylvania State University, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University, and the universities of Texas, Washington and Hawaii. [The Navy recently became the quarterback for counter-bomb research -- ed.] Another $15 million may be allocated to other universities outside the affiliate network.
Keep in mind, the Pentagon's fringe-science arm is planning to spend $38 million next year on giantblimp research, and $200 million on "cognitive" computers. So $45 million isn't all that much, in Pentagon terms.
"When admirals start talking about 'Manhattan Projects,' do you know how much money was spent on that?" John Anderson, a chemical engineer and provost of Ohio's Case Western Reserve University, asks. "You can't have a Manhattan-Project result with a tin-cup donation... If you're going to influence the academic research environment, you have to provide some resources and a compelling reason for doing it."
Of course, it'd be easier to ponying up the big bucks if there was some technological "silver bullet," some magic solution, that could instantly neuter improvised explosive devices -- or least make them easier to find. There ain't. Which is why the Pentagon is shifting its counter-bomb research "away from short-term solutions toward more basic research," the magazine notes.
After several open calls to industry and hundreds of proposals, the task force already has picked most of the "low-hanging fruit," according to the group's acting technology director...
Proposals are becoming repetitive, he says, particularly in the fields of ballistic protection and IED signal jamming, areas where the task force has placed the most emphasis so far.
But, even with these proven technologies, it's hard not to get the feeling that bomb-stopping isn't anywhere close to the top of the Pentagon priority list. Yes, an extra $250 million was sent over to the Joint IED Defeat Task Force in October, to buy more jammers. I assume that's on top of the agency's $1.2 billion per year budget. But even with all that extra cash, only a slim minority of American troops on the ground -- less than 15%, I'd estimate -- will get the jammers, which are one of the few proven methods for actually keeping the bombs from going off.
And remember: getting these jammers to frontline troops helps in the war after Iraq, too. If IEDs continue to be this effective, you can bet, for the next decade or two, guerilla groups will start jury-rigging some bombs as soon as U.S. land.
Meanwhile, there's talk at the Pentagon of trying to pare back its new destroyer program, aimed at fighting the Chinese one day. The hope is to maybe bring the costs down to a mere $2 billion per ship. Research and development funding for the Missile Defense Agency remains strong, however, at an annual clip of $8.8 billion. Should we therefore assume that the Pentagon thinks a possible ICBM attack is eight times more important than the roadside bombs that are killing our troops today?
Iraq Airwaves: Traffic Jam
Every once in a while around Baghdad, American bomb squads stop what they're doing, and retire to their bunks. The reason why: "Compass Call," a modified C-130 turboprop plane which serves as the "only US wide-area offensive information warfare platform," according to GlobalSecurity.org. The Compass Call and the Navy's EA-6B Prowler can jam radio and cell phone traffic for miles around, disrupting insurgent communications. But the aircraft also can disrupt the jammers that bomb squads use to stop improvised explosives, Aviation Week notes. There's even a fear that all those crossed signals could accidentally detonate guerilla bombs.
"We have a smart system that jams IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in Iraq, that found itself fighting with another smart electronic system," Lt. Gen. Walter Buchanan, chief of the 9th Air Force and Central Command Air Forces, says. "They got locked on [to each other] because of the lack of coordination..."
Another concern is accidentally triggering IEDs with jamming signals. "We deconflict our jamming activities when we know we have people near IEDs... so that we don't unintentionally set them off," he says.
The problems also extend to surveillance and communications systems. "When you take a look at data links and the number of jammers in place and all the radios we have out there, [deconflicting] becomes a very difficult problem," Buchanan says.
Because all of the communication systems are in similar bands and create interference, a Predator UAV at Balad, the main U.S. air base in Iraq, is in danger of losing its ground control link once it is 35 mi. from base, he says. In the less congested airways of Afghanistan, that range is 120 mi.
"The problem is bad enough that Central Command is putting more urgency into developing an EW [Electronic Warfare] Coordination Cell," the magazine observes. "The task is critical because new users of the electromagnetic spectrum come into theater almost daily."
Before the end of the decade, information warfare specialists are expected to use these and other electronic warfare aircraft, both manned and unmanned, to find enemy communications networks and plot with precision their location on the ground. Those networks would then be seeded with false information as well as viruses, worms, zombies, Trojan Horses and other computer attack tools that would leave them communicating with U.S. analysts as often as they do with other insurgents.
Upgrade for IED Task Force?
Guys in uniform bitch a lot. Especially when two military groups are tackling related jobs. Handling bombs is no different. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) guys think the engineers are constantly interfering in their work. The engineers say the EOD dudes are snobby and too secret squirrel for their own good.
But, around Baghdad at least, the group causing the most friction seems to be the Pentagon's "Joint IED Defeat Task Force." While EOD techs have to scrounge around to buy their own belts, the Task Force has a billion dollar budget. And while bomb squadders spend a year in training, I saw completely green members of the Task Force wandering around bomb sites, picking stuff up at random. The engineers and the EOD techs took bets on whether or not they'd survive their tours of duty.
Not that the Task Force folks had much nice to say about the bomb squads. "EOD has it pretty easy," one member told me.
For most soldiers in Iraq, the Task Force's main contribution was "5-and-25." It's a mantra which means that soldiers should check 5 meters around their vehicles when they first get out, and then do a 25 meter sweep after that.
Behind the scenes, and back in the States, the Task Force is also doing a bunch of technology development to try and slow down the seemingly-endless waves of improvised bombs hitting American forces. Several Task Force members have compared the effort to the Manhattan Project. But with the number of explosives on the rise, there's grumbling in Washington that the Task Force doesnt have the juice or the budget to justify the comparison, the L.A. Times notes. There's talk of replacing the Task Force, currently headed by a one-star general, with a new group that would have "an active-duty three-star general or admiral, or a retired four-star officer."
Some military officials complain that the Pentagon has made little progress in getting the White House to pressure agencies such as the CIA, FBI and Department of Energy to devote more resources and full-time personnel to the anti-IED effort. One difficulty they cite is that a one-star general tends to wield little influence in the government hierarchy.
"It's just amazing how long it takes for the bureaucracy to seriously tackle an issue, when some things should happen lickety-split," said a second senior Defense official.
After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been boiled down to 29 hours. But that day-and-a-smidge shift with “Team Mayhem,” a U.S. Army bomb squad, winds up being pretty damn action-packed.
Booby traps, smoking mortars, rooftop gunfire, suspected truck bombs, roadside explosives, and an idiosyncratic little robot named “Rainman” all figure prominently in the story, which appears in this month’s Wired magazine. Mostly, though, the article is about the battle of wits that’s being fought between high-tech U.S. military squads and low-tech insurgent bombers. Improvised explosives have become the deadliest threat to soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. So the winner of this fight largely determines the fate of the counterinsurgency.
But getting a clear picture of this tangle has been tough; military bomb squads, or "explosive ordnance disposal" units, are ordinarily shrouded in secrecy, operating in shadows. This is one of the first times they’ve allowed a reporter in for an extended stay.
So click here for a look inside “The Baghdad Bomb Squad.” Once you’re done, you can take a look at 140 pictures I shot during my time in Iraq. And here are some reports on American troops’ morale, and my online diaries from Iraq. Enjoy…
THERE'S MORE: Capt. Greg Hirschey, the commanding officer of the 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Company (which inlcludes Team Mayhem), just dropped me a line. Two of his sergeants, he said, "were hit with an IED yesterday with injuries to their security element. I just walked into the shop from an incident and received word that our Air Force augmentation team was hit with an IED just minutes ago... It is hectic right now once again. Seems like it never stops. Here is a photo of my shot from this morn."
New Iraqi Threat: Pressure Bombs
"Until recently, most roadside explosives in [Iraq] were triggered remotely by an insurgent using a cellphone, doorbell or other wireless device," USA Today notes.
But U.S. forces have picked up more and more radio frequency jammers to keep the bombs from going off. And so the insurgents are switching gears.
"The new weapon out there is the pressure-detonated IED," Col. Steven Salazar, commander of the Army's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, warned company commanders during a recent battle briefing. "It's a very dangerous tactic..."
Pressure-switch bombs [do they mean landmines? -- ed.] aren't entirely new. They have been used, on and off, by insurgents as far back as fall 2003, says Maj. Dean Wollan, intelligence officer of the 3rd Brigade. They still are commonly found in Ramadi, Fallujah and Baghdad.
In the Baqouba area north of Baghdad, insurgents had abandoned the use of pressure-triggered bombs this spring after U.S. and Iraqi forces discovered eight of the devices before they could be detonated. The bombs were poorly assembled, Wollan said.
The re-emergence of pressure-activated bombs has come as insurgents have acquired more expertise in building and placing them. "These guys either received additional training, or new personnel has moved in to show them how to do it correctly," Wollan said.
I.R.A. Bombs in Iraq
Here's the ultimate example of open source warfare: "Eight British soldiers killed during ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly sophisticated bomb first used by the IRA," according to The Independent.
The soldiers, who were targeted by insurgents as they travelled through the country, died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams...
According to security sources, the technology for the bombs used in the attacks, which were developed using technology from photographic flash units, was employed by the IRA some 15 years ago after Irish terrorists were given advice by British agents. "We are seeing technology in Iraq today that it took the IRA 20 years to develop," said a military intelligence officer with experience in Northern Ireland...
The former agent added: "The photographic flashgun unit was replaced with infra-red and then coded infra-red, but basically they were variations of the same device. The technology came from the security forces, but the IRA always shared its equipment and expertise with Farc guerrillas in Colombia, the Basque separatists, ETA and Palestinian groups. There is no doubt in my mind that the technology used to kill our troops in Basra is the same British technology from a decade ago."
THERE'S MORE: Be sure to check out Chris Allbritton's on-the-ground report on Iraq's election day.
Bomb-Busting Buffalo
"A few months ago, spray-painted graffiti began appearing on Baghdad walls," reports Defense News' Greg Grant. "'Kill the Claw,'" it read in Arabic.
The message was aimed at a new vehicle called the Buffalo, a thickly armored mine disposal truck that seeks out and disposes of deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Its 30-foot retractable arm has a camera, to help the operator inside see what he’s doing, and a claw-like rake for finding and detonating the roadside bombs.
The insurgents’ graffiti was not quite the advertising campaign expected by Buffalo manufacturer Force Protection, but it is a testament to how effective the 24-ton vehicle has proven in neutralizing the biggest killer of American troops in Iraq. Since its introduction in late 2003, the Buffalo has become the favorite of U.S. Army combat engineer teams.
Grant's right. I spent a fair amount of time with engineer teams in Baghdad this summer, and they all raved about the vehicle. Not just because they were well-protected. But also because the thing had a kick-ass air conditioning system, too. And comfortable seats -- which is important on a 12-hour route clearance shift.
However, Grant gets it wrong when he says that "so far, nobody has been injured while riding in one of the vehicles, which have taken repeated IED hits with only minimal damage to exterior components."
I talked to several soldiers who had Buffalo-riding buddies injured by the handmade bombs -- and by their own thick skulls. These guys would dig up an explosive with the Buffalo's spindly claw. And then, they'd be so proud of what they found, they'd want to snap a quick picture of their prize. So they'd use the claw to bring the bomb right up to the Buffalo's cab. And then, the IED would go off.
X-Ray Van in Action
A few weeks back, we talked about the U.S. military's small fleet of specially-equipped vans that can peek inside cars and trucks for explosives. One Defense Tech reader, who worked with an X-ray van, gives us a rundown of how the thing worked:
I used these vans when I deployed with the 1st Cavalry. We were responsible for entry control points to key facilities, like Baghdad Airport. The vans were a tremendous asset, incredibly accurate.
A prime example: Inside one vehicle we scanned was a gentleman who had been shot by insurgents. The little buggers got him seven times, and he somehow survived. He lived at a village near the airport, and went through our check point. We were able to see the metal still in his body, while he was still sitting in his car. The vehicle didn't have to even stop.
Another example: A guard for a dignitary forgot to declare his pistol. In the scan, we found it in a small box he had cut into the floor – hidden, just in case insurgents stopped him. Another time, we found a pistol that was hidden in a fender. Yet another was a sword found between the gas tank and the body of a KIA bongo.
Once people get screened and discovered, it really does deter them from doing it again. I am sure they tell their friends. One group of guys tried to sneak in small things, like knives and toy pistols. We caught them, they didn't try it again – at least not for a couple of weeks. Finally, they did. And, as luck would have it, we caught them a second time.
Bee Mine Bee Mine, Baby
Since the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military has used chickens as chemical weapons sensors, dolphins as mine detectors, and armor-wearing dogs as controllers of unruly crowds. And, generally, two-legged soldiers have been grateful for the four-legged and finned assists.
Members of the insect community, however, have been downright pissed. They hate evil-doers just as much as the next genus. And they've been itching to get in on the action.
Bees... can be trained in a couple of days to pick up the scent of the explosive in the landmine... When released into a minefield, the bees find their way toward the mines... [They] are too small to detect either with the naked eye or high-resolution video at long ranges. So instead, the team employs a laser emitter that sweeps an area like radar or sonar. When the light hits a bee, it reflects, and sensors are able to tell by the reflection just where the bee is. After sweeping several times, the scientists are able to crunch the data and see statistically where the higher occurrences of bees are located.
In controlled situations, the method is extremely effective: Bees can detect very small traces of explosive vapors with 97% accuracy and are "wrong" -- that is, passing over a mine without noticing it -- less than 1% of the time.
AND MORE: Reader DG notes that this "is not a new idea." Back in 1999, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories were training mine-sniffing bees of their own.
AND MORE: "This reminds me of a funny quote I saw about the use of dolphins, from an Aussie navy guy working with them in clearing Iraq's Um Qasr harbor," says Defense Tech pal Peter Singer.
'Flipper's fucked, mate. The dolphins have had all this amazing publicity but as soon as they put one in the water it shot through. There's a war going on and Flipper goes AWOL. If you put one to work in Sydney Harbour it would mark a million things because it can't tell the difference between a washing machine and a mine. The bottom line, mate, is it's a fish. It's also a very smart fish so how do you know it hasn't just gone off for a feed instead of working and then thought, 'Hang on, I'd better mark a few things or they won't give me any fish when I get back.'
Phone Bomb Interceptor on the Line?
In Iraq, I had knowledgeable folks swear to me that cell phones had never been used to detonate bombs there. Those images we've all seen on CNN -- they're of long-range cordless telephone, not cells. The cell network just isn't reliable enough for a quality-conscious bomber, they say. Since I've been home, I've had other people swear the exact opposite to me.
Either way, New Scientist is right in saying that cells "provide a simple yet effective way for terrorists to remotely trigger a bomb." And that's why it'd be great news if an idea for "a portable device devised by US defence contractor Raytheon [to] quickly identify and disable such weapons" really works out. {Here's a link to the patent.)
The device includes a transmitter that mimics a cell phone base station and a metal horn to concentrate the signal from a 10 milliwatt power source in a single direction. Scanning... a concealed phone... with the tool... tricks it into thinking it is in range of a new network base station and blocks it from any genuine stations in the vicinity.
The suspect phone will also respond with a “handshake signal” containing its phone number, allowing a network operator to temporarily disconnect it from the real network, and preventing it from receiving a detonation call.
(Big ups: CC)
Iran Supplying Iraq's Bombs?
On Wednesday, I talked briefly about how Iraqi insurgents' are increasingly using armor-piercing "explosively formed projectiles" to form the deadly hearts of their improvised bombs.
Today, the Times is reporting that "many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs... have been designed in Iran."
The spread of the new weapons seems to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.
Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq's vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle's armor plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.
Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran...
Pentagon and intelligence officials say that some shipments of the new explosives have contained both components and fully manufactured devices, and may have been spirited into Iraq along the porous Iranian border by the Iranian-backed, anti-Israeli terrorist group Hezbollah, or by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. American commanders say these bombs closely matched those that Hezbollah has used against Israel.
"The devices we're seeing now have been machined," said a military official who has access to classified reporting on the insurgents' bomb-making abilities. "There is evidence of some sophistication."
Sneak Peeks at Car Bombs
It's not easy, trying to figure out what's inside a suspicious car or truck. Often, the vehicle has to be searched by hand, putting soldiers right up against a possible car bomb. That's a risk not many are willing to take. Instead, I saw a bunch of trucks around Baghdad (like this one) get torched, just to be sure there weren't any explosives inside. Most of the time, there weren't.
Defense Industry Dailypoints out a new, less destructive way to make that call.
[The] Z Backscatter Van (ZBV) is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV employs... Z Backscatter technology, which offers photo-like images that reveal contraband that transmission X-rays miss - such as explosives (including car bombs), people and plastic weapons...
[It works] by directing a sweeping beam of X-rays at the object under examination, and then measuring and plotting the intensity of scattered X-rays as a function of the beam position.
Akin to light reflection, Z Backscatter signals are particularly strong whenever the incident X-rays interact with explosives, plastics, and other biological items, which typically contain low Z materials. Even inorganic objects, such as metals, are given shape and form in Z Backscatter images - making them easier to interpret than transmission images during X-ray evaluation.
Eight of the vans are supposed to go to U.S. Central Command, for use in Afghanistan and Iraq. Baghdad's truck drivers can't wait.
The attack, also near Haditha, is one of the worst since the American invasion. Usually, such strikes only hurt or kill a few people at a time -- if they wound anyone at all. Taking out 14 people in a single stroke is just about unheard of.
It either means the attackers had the devil's odds, timing their blast perfectly. Or, more likely, there was something very different about the explosive used in this strike.
While I was in Iraq, I saw several examples of "explosively formed projectiles" -- concave cylinders that shoot out jets of molten metal when they're detonated. Armies have been using them for years as anti-tank weapons. But lately, Iraqi bomb-makers have been fashioning home-made, crude versions of their own. And these improvied explosive devices, or IEDs, have wreaked havoc, sawing through armor and limbs with a terrifying ferrocity. Perhaps that's what happened in Haditha today. I sure hope it was just awful luck.
Given Noah's past interest in military dogs, I thought it appropriate to note that the Army, for the first time since 1977, has issued a new field manual on military working dogs -- MWDs, described in the document as "the only living item[s] in the Army supply system."
As the FM notes,the missions for military pooches have changed dramatically over the years. They're now used in everything from warfighting to crowd control and, of course, bomb-sniffing.
But there are probably a few former prisoners in Iraq who'd take issue with this assertion:
The highly aggressive dog tactics of the 1960s and 1970s are long gone.
How do you handle a roadside bomb, when there's no robot nearby? Simple: you use one of those remote-controlled cars that kids have been playing with for decades.
"Yesterday, I was 'outside the wire,' patrolling with the 2nd Platoon. We came upon a possible IED [improvised explosive device] in the middle of the road, and stopped all traffic to check it out," writes Sgt. Greg Papadatos, of the 69th Infantry Regiment, in a Military.com diary.
A young private [named "E.S."] in that platoon has one of those radio-controlled toy cars. When they find unidentifiable debris in the road, E.S. sends out his little RC car and rams it. If it's light enough to be moved or knocked over, it's too light to be a bomb, so we can approach it and get rid of it. If it's heavy, we call EOD [explosive ordnance disposal -- the military's bomb squad]. At night, they duct tape a flashlight to the car.
The military actually has robots that it uses for such things, but they are larger, slower, higher-tech, and frightfully expensive. Only EOD units have them, and you could wait for hours and hours before they show up with their robot. If 200 units read about this idea, and 50 units actually buy a toy RC car, and it saves just one single life, it would all be worth it.
I've suggested to E.S. that he put some fancy paint and a couple of LED lights on his toy car, demonstrate it to some Army brass at the Pentagon, and sell it to them for $80,000. He won't actually try that, but it's fun to imagine. In the meantime, I've also suggested to some of his chain of command that they put him in for a commendation or a medal for his ingenuity. If he ever finds a real bomb with that toy car, they probably will. (via the Huffington Post)
But the Army is getting wise. Back in December, they beefed up the $4.7 million Warlock budget by $42 million. Yesterday, Army vice chief of staff Gen. Richard Cody announced that the Army is "buying over 8,000 electronic jammers," according to the AFP.
The jammers are "no silver bullet" against the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, Cody warned. But still, it's a good move; they've helped contribute to a 40 percent drop in IED casualties, the General said. Let's just hope the purchase doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the New York Timeshighlighted the Warlock shortage on page A1 a few weeks back.
DRONES, LASERS = I.E.D. SPOTTERS
There were a couple of anti-IED technologies I didn't get to mention in my recent Wired News piece. One of 'em comes from Navy-funded engineers at Advanced Ceramics Research in Tuscon, Arizona. They're outfitting their Silver Fox unmanned plane with a radio frequency emitter. The signal returns when the wave encounters a detonation wire. And that tips troops off to the fact that an handmade bomb might be nearby.
Dayton, Ohio's Spectra Research is also getting some Navy money to spot the jury-rigged weapons. But the company has a whole different approach to doing it. By using a series of laser flashes over a wide array of the infrared, thermal, and visual wavelengths, the company's technology can -- hopefully -- spot suspicious shapes as they appear on the road.
Similar sensors are often fooled by weather or light conditions. Spectra's is different, promises company president Gordon Little. But by using so many different bands of light, Little thinks his project could lead to "greatly reduced false alarms."
But there's a big shortcoming in the technology, Little admits. If an IED is buried in the ground -- and they often are -- Spectra's sensor would be pretty much useless. "Buried objects would not beparticularly accessible to us," he sighs.
JAMMERS, MICROWAVE BLASTS TARGET I.E.D.S
When U.S. Army Capt. Christopher Sullivan was killed last week by a handmade bomb, it was a tragedy for his family -- and a tragically ordinary event for the American military. Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have been responsible for hundreds of American casualties in Iraq. And so far, there doesn't appear to be any reliable way of stopping them.
The Pentagon, scrambling for answers, is in the middle of a frantic search for high-tech methods to find and neutralize the jury-rigged weapons.
Microwave blasts, radio-frequency jammers and chemical sensors are among the methods being explored and deployed in this largely secret effort.
But, because IEDs are cobbled together from "whatever the people that plant them can find," warned Cliff Anderson, a program manager at the Office of Naval Research, "there is no magic bullet" that will suddenly end the IED threat...
Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area think tank, believes, the most effective IED countermeasure might be a pulse of electromagnetic energy that can "fry the circuits of these bombs."
Researchers at the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Dahlgren Laboratory in Virginia are working on such a solution, called NIRF, short for Neutralizing Improvised Explosive Devices with RF. The device, according to a source familiar with the project, "produces a very high-frequency field, in the microwave range, at very short range" to take out an IED's electronics. The Pentagon hopes to deploy NIRF in Iraq later this year.
THERE'S MORE: The L.A. Times has a dynamite story today from Al-Ramadi, Iraq, on the dangers facing American convoys there.
As he always does before traveling the roadways of Iraq, Marine Staff Sgt. Johnathan Radel on Tuesday said a short prayer.
"Lord, please keep us safe today from IEDs and VBIEDS," he said as he sat in his Humvee, using the initials for improvised explosive devices and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.
Less than five minutes later, as the eight-vehicle convoy rolled through the streets of Ramadi in the predawn darkness, an IED exploded beneath one of the Humvees, sending an orange fireball into the sky and shredding the vehicle's back tires.
AND MORE: How does the Army's 3rd Corps Support Command say you should handle IEDs? Read this briefing to find out.
TINY METALS, BIG EXPLOSIONS
"Nanotechnology is grabbing headlines for its potential in advancing the life sciences and computing research," Defense Tech pal John Gartner notes in Technology Review. "But the Department of Defense has found another use: a new class of weaponry that uses energy-packed nanometals to create powerful, compact bombs."
Sandia National Laboratories, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are researching how to manipulate the flow of energy within and between molecules, a field known as nanoenergentics, which enables building more lethal weapons such as "cave-buster bombs" that have several times the detonation force of conventional bombs such as the "daisy cutter" or MOAB (mother of all bombs).
Researchers can greatly increase the power of weapons by adding materials known as superthermites that combine nanometals such as nanoaluminum with metal oxides such as iron oxide, according to Steven Son, a project leader in the Explosives Science and Technology group at Los Alamos.
"The advantage (of using nanometals) is in how fast you can get their energy out," Son says.
Son says that the chemical reactions of superthermites are faster and therefore release greater amounts of energy more rapidly.
"Superthermites can increase the (chemical) reaction time by a thousand times," Son says, resulting in a very rapid reactive wave. (Thanks to RC for the tip.)
THERE'S MORE: Howard Lovy has the goods on "death by nano."
ANOTHER I.E.D. STOPPER?
"Two Missouri professors seeking ways to track civilian automobiles for General Motors have discovered a way to detect and conceivably even detonate so-called Improvised Explosive Devices," Soldiers for the Truth says. It sounds a lot like what the Army already has, in its Warlock series of radio frequency jammers.
Simply stated, the scientists have figured out a way to eavesdrop on the ether to detect ambient electronic noise floating around when the mad bombers set up their devices in preparation of setting off an ambush. Both the transmitter the insurgents need to send out a radio signal ordering the detonator to explode and the detonator itself, emit these radio signals.
The trick is isolating the unique signals much the same way sonar operators on submarines filter out biologic and machinery noises until they can identify the sounds of the target they are looking for. That radio signal sounds very much like the rapid electronic “beep-beep-beep” emitted by Soviet-era SA-2 acquisition radar...
“It would be relatively easy to override these radio receivers if we can recognize them,” Hubing told me last week. “When we identify the receiver, it is possible to prevent an IED from ever receiving the initiation signal.”
Hubing said operators using the same equipment could then detonate the IED under a controlled situation where it would not cause any casualties.
The technology to create the device already exists. The laboratory where the two scientists do their research possessed enough equipment to make a working theoretical model of the IED detector and present their finding to the Pentagon, Hubing said. Beetner, the other half of the team and the fiscal wizard in the equation, said he thinks it will take about $750,000 and a year of focused attention to field a working prototype.
MORE ON WARLOCK'S TRICKS
It's not much. But I've got a leeetle more information on the military's hush-hush defense against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
The Warlock radio frequency jammers are made by the New York and Simi Valley firm EDO. And they're based on an earlier EDO product called the Shortstop Electronic Protection System, which is designed to protect troops against proximity-fused weapons, like mortar rounds and artillery shells. According to EDO, Shortstop grabs the electronic signal that one of these weapons makes, "modifies the signal and sends it back to the weapon making the fuze think it is close to the ground. The fuze then prematurely detonates the warhead rendering the weapon essentially harmless."
The Warlock doesn't do anything quite so dramatic. Instead, "it basically works by intercepting the signal sent from a remote location to the IED instructing it to detonate," an Army official told Inside Defense (which has a wrap-up of all its recent IED stories here.) "The signal 'cannot make contact, therefore when it can’t make contact it doesn’t detonate,' much like a cellular phone call that does not connect, he added. "The cell phone never gets through, but [enemy forces] think it go through."
The jammers come in two flavors, each interrupting different frequency bands. Warlock Green connects off of the 24V DC power supply of any military vehicle, an Army document notes. Warlock Red is "designed to connect off the cigarette lighter and/or 12V DC power supply."
THERE'S MORE: "The Army is testing a new method of intercepting improvised explosive devices that relies on an up-armored humvee and two types of vehicles designed in South Africa to withstand blasts from land mines," Inside Defense also notes.
U.S. forces -- including the 82nd Airborne's Task Force Pathfinder -- have been using the vehicles since the beginning of the year. According to an Army public affairs story, soldiers like the RG31 because it's built to withstand a bomb (more on how that's done here) and because it's roomy. "Like riding in an armored Cadillac," one soldier quips.
I.E.D.S - WHY THE WHISPERS?
It all seemed pretty straightforward, at first.
I wanted to do some follow-up on a post from a few weeks back, about the U.S. military's efforts to counter improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Those are the roadside bombs which are proving so lethal to American troops in Iraq.
A company out of New York, EDO, put out a couple of press releases announcing their $45 million contract with the Army, to make radio frequency jammers that could block the signals triggering the IEDs. Some of the government trade press had followed up, with quick articles on the jammer, called Warlock Green.
But despite the semi-public profile, when I asked EDO chief Bill Walkowiak about Warlock Green, he went mute. The Army wouldn't let him talk any more, he said. Anything having to do with IEDs – it was all classified now.
And that's a problem, some defense industry insiders are saying. Not whether or not Walkowiak will talk a reporter -- defense contractors clam up all the time, often rightly so. The dark blanket of secrecy that's been thrown over any and all information about these roadside bombs is the issue. "The Pentagon remains tight-lipped about how much money it is spending on a regular basis to counter the threat of such devices and how many troops who need it have access to specialized equipment, such as electronic jammer devices," Inside Defense notes. "Even details on how the enemy builds the IED remain under wraps."
Finding and stopping IEDs is a super-hard problem. They don't give off heat, so thermal sensors won't work; they're not made of metal, generally, so magnets are out; they're not unstable, like a chemical agent, so detectors that "sniff" the air haven't done the trick, yet.
In fact, the problem is so hard, that all interested researchers and contractors and scientists – not just the ones with security clearance – need to get a whack at IEDs, says John MacGaffin, former associate deputy director for operations at the CIA.
“Why is it classified?” he asks Inside Defense. “What is the secret?”
MacGaffin, who spent 31 years at the CIA, now runs the AKE Group, which provides training and security in Iraq for major media organizations and industry. He says the only information that should remain classified are the frequencies used by the United States to jam IEDs. He acknowledged that if information on how enemies build IEDs is released, other insurgents could learn how to construct the devices. But there is also a strong likelihood that release of that information will prompt industry to find the solution that will make the weapon less deadly, he says.
“What’s more important? Keeping people alive,” MacGaffin told sister publication Inside the Army last week.
Not everyone agrees that DOD should be more generous with IED threat data. Defense officials say the protection of such information is vital to ensuring countermeasures will work for as long as possible…
“I know there’s a frustration,” Scott Gooch, senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, said. [The company] is conducting capabilities assessment work on IEDs for the Joint Staff.
But classification issues are nothing new, Gooch noted -- and new ideas are making their way to the Pentagon. In one example, a farmer discovered a material that could withstand explosives and sent it via UPS to the Defense Department.
But doesn’t the farmer example actually argue for more people getting involved in the process – and less secrecy?
THERE'S MORE: Shhh! Keep quiet when you're reading Steven Aftergood'sSlate story on why airport screeners don't have to tell you what law they're relying on to give you the pat-down.
AND MORE: House Armed Services Committee chair Duncan Hunter "is developing a proposal to boost production" of Warlock Green-like jammers, Aerospace Daily says. "The Army plans to buy another 3,300 jammers, a figure that Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) asserted still would leave many U.S. vehicles unprotected against IEDs."
I.E.D. DEFENSE - NO LUCK YET
It's priority A1 in America's defense research labs: Coming up with technologies that can spot and defuse the roadside bombs which have proved so deadly to U.S. forces in Iraq.
But so far, Defense News reports, there hasn't been a whole lot of progress made in figuring out how to stop these improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. There's no "single silver bullet out there that can stop this threat," a member of a Pentagon task force on IEDs told the journal. "As we find some solutions that may address a particular type of weapon they’re using, a particular tactic, they shift, find new ways to do things."
Meanwhile, IEDs are doing something terrible to American troops. On Monday, an Oregon Army National Guardsman, Spc. David W. Johnson, was killed by an IED near Camp Taji, northwest of Baghdad. "Since the beginning of [Johnson's] battalion's Iraq deployment in April, eight guardsmen have been killed, all by IEDs planted on roads or in vehicles," the AP notes.
One of the only effective devices has been the Warlock Green electronic countermeasure system, which "emits a radio frequency that jams communications signals that detonate roadside bombs," according to Federal Computer Week.
"The Defense Department, however, has struggled to establish the industrial base for these systems," Defense News notes. "EDO, a New York-based firm specializing in high-tech niche products, was the only company to bid on a $35 million contract to produce 1,000 Warlock systems. And until recently, it was the only company capable of such a task — preventing mass production of the life-saving systems."
Also in the works are “change detector” sensors for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). UAV program officials are seeking payloads and software that can be added to the service’s fleet of unmanned vehicles to monitor roadways and report any changes back to soldiers.
So far, the Army has tested several technologies but has not found one that works well enough to deploy, a top UAV official said this summer. Most UAV technologies can survey areas for changes, but typically are effective in dealing with objects far larger than IEDs.
The blast "demonstrated the uneven vulnerability of U.S. forces, who are equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry and armor, and their Iraqi allies, who fight the same battles using vastly inferior equipment," Fainaru writes in a gripping, must-read account.
The picture shows what a real EFP munition looks like. This is M2 Selectable Lightweight Attack Munition (
Soldiers in Iraq were already encountering EFPs -- and the closely-related "shaped-charges" -- back in the 
Which is why I cringe every time I hear about some newbie 
EOD Training and Evaluation Unit Two, part of Naval Expeditionary Combat Command headquartered at this facility near Virginia Beach in southern Virginia, in November welcomed five two-man teams from Navy bases around the world, according to the unit's skipper, Commander Tom Smith, 42.
There's only one, teeny-tiny problem with the piece: It's not really about a "bomb squad," or explosive ordnance disposal (
The contraptions are called 
In what was dubbed "
Newsweek reports from "an industrial block in downtown LA [turned] into a busy Baghdad square" -- the scene for a 120-camera shoot, designed to capture simulated carnage in the "frozen-in-time feeling" of "
600 of the machines have already shipped to troops in Iraq. Another 1800 are being built. And if the BomBots look more like toy trucks than military-grade hardware well, there's a reason for that. That's exactly what the things are.
Iraqi insurgents are trying out a new tactic. "The newest method of triggering [an improvised explosive] is a 
Someone must be using them, I guess. Otherwise, why would Naval Sea Systems Command 
New equipment including tougher vehicles and simple ground robots make this possible, as I explain in an article in the April 
UPDATE 10:07 AM: Of course, being an EOD pro doesn't make you bomb-proof. In an incident I barely missed, UK Captain Peter Norton lost a leg and part of an arm to an IED. Yesterday, he was 
None of the material in the story -- the stuff about microwave blasters or radio frequency jammers -- was classified, he admitted. Most of it had been taken from open source materials. And many of the systems were years and years from being fielded. But by bundling it all together, I was doing a "world class job of doing the enemy's research for him, for free." So watch your step, he said, as I went back to my ride-alongs with the 
It seems an insurgent cell out here in Al Anbar has been building sophisticated 
Now, an intelligence source weighs in, telling Defense Tech that the "aerial IED" threat is all hype -- no matter what the general said. "Honest to God, there hasn't been a single anti-helo IED discovered anywhere in Southwest Asia," the source notes. "The bad guys are so successful at downing them with small arms fire they have no incentive to adopt needlessly complex anti-helo mines or IEDs. There might be one or two out there, but we haven't heard anything about it."
On Monday, 
So insurgents are altering their strikes, "
If Mason was bothered by the experience, he didn't show it. "All I've got is a little short-term memory loss. There are four roads on post -- I keep getting lost," he laughed.
I went down to the military's 
I've mentioned the 
Of course, it'd be easier to ponying up the big bucks if there was some technological "silver bullet," some magic solution, that could instantly neuter improvised explosive devices -- or least make them easier to find. 
But, around Baghdad at least, the group causing the most friction seems to be the Pentagon's "
After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been 
But U.S. forces have picked up more and more 
The soldiers, who were targeted by insurgents as they travelled through the country, died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams...
I used these vans when I deployed with the 1st Cavalry. We were responsible for entry control points to key facilities, like Baghdad Airport. The vans were a tremendous asset, incredibly accurate.
Members of the insect community, however, have been downright pissed. They hate evil-doers just as much as the next genus. And they've been itching to get in on the action.
Either way, New Scientist is right in saying that cells "provide a simple yet effective way for terrorists to remotely trigger a bomb." And that's why it'd be great news if an idea for "a portable device devised by US defence contractor Raytheon [to] 
Today, the Times is reporting that "many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs... 
It's not easy, trying to figure out what's inside a suspicious car or truck. Often, the vehicle has to be searched by hand, putting soldiers right up against a possible car bomb. That's a risk not many are willing to take. Instead, I saw a bunch of trucks around Baghdad (like this one) get torched, just to be sure there weren't any explosives inside. Most of the time, there weren't.
Akin to light reflection, Z Backscatter signals are particularly strong whenever the incident X-rays interact with explosives, plastics, and other biological items, which typically contain low Z materials. Even inorganic objects, such as metals, are given shape and form in Z Backscatter images - making them easier to interpret than transmission images during X-ray evaluation.
As the FM notes,the missions for military pooches have changed dramatically over the years. They're now used in everything from warfighting to crowd control and, of course, bomb-sniffing.
"Yesterday, I was 'outside the wire,' patrolling with the 2nd Platoon. We came upon a possible IED [improvised explosive device] in the middle of the road, and stopped all traffic to check it out," writes Sgt. Greg Papadatos, of the 
For at least six months, military types have been talking up how great 
Dayton, Ohio's 
The Pentagon, scrambling for answers, is in the middle of a 
"Nanotechnology is grabbing headlines for its potential in advancing the life sciences and computing research," Defense Tech pal John Gartner notes in Technology Review. "But the Department of Defense has found another use: a new class of weaponry that uses 
THERE'S MORE: "The Army is testing a new method of intercepting improvised explosive devices that relies on an up-armored humvee and two types of vehicles designed in South Africa to withstand blasts from land mines," Inside Defense also notes.
It all seemed pretty straightforward, at first.
It's priority A1 in America's defense research labs: Coming up with technologies that can spot and defuse the roadside bombs which have proved so deadly to U.S. forces in Iraq.
