Battling the Low-Tech Boom
America's anti-IED strategy pits million-dollar technology against garage door openers.
OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, improvised explosive devices, the tactic of choice for Iraqi insurgents, have spread to the Afghan roadside in a big way: At last count, IEDs accounted for more than 70 percent of US combat casualties in Iraq and half of those in Afghanistan. Since 2003, according to Pentagon documents, the Army's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) and its predecessors have spent $14 billion trying to do what JIEDDO's name implies, including $2.3 billion for high-tech countermeasures "to thwart simple, cheap triggering devices such as two-way radios or garage door openers."
In Afghanistan, the pricey gear has helped coalition troops find and clear nearly three times as many bombs in 2008 as in 2006. But the insurgents have kept pace: Casualties from IEDs have increased by nearly the same margin. As for whether the money might not be better spent on, say, humanitarian and development efforts, the IED chasers note that US forces will now likely face this guerrilla tactic wherever they go. "IEDs are a weapon," notes JIEDDO's 2008 report to Congress. "They are not the enemy."
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Typical IED Cell
- A financier pays for explosives and cheap electronics
- A bomb builder makes the devices
- An emplacer hides the bombs
- A spotter watches for the approach of military targets
- A triggerman detonates IEDs using devices like cell phones or garage-door openers
- A cameraman tapes the mayhem for online recruitment
How the Military Fights Back
- Warrior Alpha aerial surveillance spies on suspected bomb makers at a cost of $242 million
- Talon robots and thermal cams suss out IEDs and shady characters
- Rhino predetonation units ($59 million all told) blow up IEDs from afar
- Wolf Collar gear (a $67 million initiative) rakes up IED trigger wires
- Hunter and Chameleon jammers blindly thwart IED electronics
- Dog teams sniff around for hidden bombs
- Husky device (developed for $33.1 million) detects buried explosives
- Truck-mounted "interrogator" arms ($216,500 a pop) probe IEDs
- Frag 5 Humvee-armor kits help protect personnel
IEDS IN AFGHANISTAN
Collateral Damage
Drone air strikes reported since 2007: 40
Civilians they've killed: about 200
Wedding parties obliterated by US air raids: at least 2
Total civilians killed in 2008 during Afghan combat: 2,118
Increase over 2007: 39%
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Pentagon investment in local security
I see this opinion piece tries to convey that billions of dollars spent by the Pentagon on countering IEDs, the network of people who build and emplace them, and putting bad guys in jail could have been better spent. I can't disagree on the level of reactionary funding for jammers and detectors. However, the 2008 annual report states explicitly that the focus is now on the prevention of emplacement, not as much on technology to defeat already active IEDs.
Not too many people realize that CIED efforts are for security. The goal is to provide aid and developmental support and once the roads are clear of booby traps and explosives, the State Department and NGOs will have the way 'paved' to do what they do and the military forces and even JIEDDO may stand down.
Counter-IED in the proper context
As someone who has studied the good and bad points of counter-IED operations for the past few years, and who has deployed to Iraq twice, it disheartens me to see this sloganeering masquerading as a serious investigative report.
The last quote in this article, "IEDs are a weapon. They are not the enemy," reflects the realization the counter-IED community had around 2006-2007 that defeating the device was actually a much less useful thing than defeating the insurgency. Every one of the C-IED innovations described above except Warrior Alpha, while useful for force protection, is designed to mitigate the threat after we have already suffered a tactical defeat -- an IED has been emplaced. The victories in this fight are coming from exactly what you advocate: getting down and dirty with key leader engagements and using reconstruction projects to shape the battlefield for the kinetic operations that we do conduct. We did this terribly in 2003-2006 and there was a strong tendency to view IEDs as the enemy rather than the weapon. This article engages in the same fallacy, not even considering the broader impact that C-IED technology and innovations can have on the overall insurgency. As a start, what about the possibility that C-IED technology may force the insurgents to expend more effort on their attacks against Coalition forces, taking away resources that they could otherwise be expending on, say, sectarian violence or criminal activity? A growing body of unclassified academic literature supports the conclusion that this may actually be the primary benefit of C-IED operations.
I think now if you were to talk to any company commander (the people who are actually fighting and winning the war) in Iraq, they would agree that the key thing they do is knowing the terrain and conducting population-based counterinsurgency. The situation in Afghanistan has some different nuances to it, but the key points are still the same. At this very moment, the future of Iraq and Afghanistan is being decided over cups of chai between young U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps captains, lieutenants, and sergeants and tribal sheikhs. JIEDDO and the entire counter-IED effort enable those company-and-below leaders to engage in population-centric counterinsurgency by providing them with advanced tools that the local population does not have access to. Their confidence in our capabilities gives them the security to come to us with tips and enables them to seek capable and respectful security forces that represent the endgame in these wars.
Given that Mother Jones herself was a community organizer and was focused on grassroots efforts, I find it remarkable that her namesake magazine is treating Afghanistan and counter-IED operations in general as a monolithic strategic-level effort run by decisions about the expenditures of billions of dollars in Washington -- and assumes that the insurgents treat it the same way, without any consideration of how IED and C-IED techniques, tactics, and procedures fit into the battle for the "human terrain" of the population. Your readers would be much better served by reporting on whether and how all this gee-whiz technology is actually utilized by leaders at the company level and below in support of the kind of population-based counterinsurgency that has proven highly effective in Iraq.
