Mr. Grant put together a great summation of the research done on IED’s. Bottom line, today’s booger eaters throughout the world are learning to make this stuff faster than their other booger eater predecessors. That is the down side of the internet and open source media. Everyone can play bomb maker these days.
There are some down sides to this for the enemy. It still takes skill and experience to safely make these things, and this statistic below does not show how many ‘oops’ deaths have been caused by this explosion of open source IED manufacturing. A prime example is the Frontline video on the Taliban, which showed this beautifully.
One thing that bothers me about this, is that contractors continue to be killed by this stuff and there really isn’t an effort focused on protecting them like there is with the military. Is this a case where it is every company for itself, or should there be an effort to coordinate the civilian operations or create a JIEDDO group for contractors so we can work to minimize our deaths as well? The irony is that contractors are used in this organization, but they really don’t do much to help out contractors. Has anyone from JIEDDO talked with any of the expat companies to go over IED survival or the latest counter measures? Or how about collect information from contractors, to add to the matrix being set up at your JKnIFE shops?
Personally, I know the answer to this question. The military could care less. So companies adapt and they have their own ways of learning how to deal with IEDs. Everyone talks with everyone out there, and after a few hits on your company, guys really start focusing on and refining countermeasures for IEDs. Some companies can afford all the cool gadgets to stop or detect this stuff, where others have to resort to other cheaper methods. Or you get some of the local national companies that just take the hits, and could care less about armor or gadgets–partly do to cost and partly do to a lack of any regulation for such a thing. With that said, it would still be cool to hear about JIEDDO or someone similar address the issues that contractors face on the road. (by the way, check out their FB page here) Contractors after all are bringing in the food, ammo, water, fuel, and everything else that the military needs to wage war, and with a little help we might actually get more of that stuff to the military in one piece. Not to mention save a few of those lowly contractor lives. –Matt
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Afghan IEDs Show Rapid Adaptation
By Greg Grant
Monday, April 12th, 2010
At a New America Foundation sponsored event today in Washington, researcher Alec Barker presented an impressive collection of data on IED attacks in southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan that show not only more attacks but an acceleration of bomb making skill and use.
Thoroughly schooled in Iraq, where techniques were refined over the years, the IED bomber guild has increased in size and skill and taken their know-how on the road, compressing the training cycle. The rapid pace of innovation in consumer electronics which are used in most triggering devices, has allowed bombers to jump from one triggering method to another as soon as countermeasures show up in the field. With plenty of targets in the form of foreign troops, Afghan insurgents, as with Iraqi insurgents, are able to continually refine and evolve their tactics.