Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Army Times
May 21, 2007
Pg. 24
Now takes more bombs to get same level of casualties
By William H. McMichael
Improvised explosive devices - the weapon of choice for insurgents in Iraq - continue to have a devastating effect on U.S. troops in Iraq.
Exact IED casualty figures are hard to come by, but according to the Pentagon, "explosive devices" have killed 1,570 U.S. troops in Iraq from the start of the war through May 5 - some 57 percent of the 2,741 total deaths due to hostile action.
Several recent IED attacks in Iraq have taken an especially heavy toll. On May 6, roadside bombs killed eight U.S. soldiers, six of them in one attack on a convoy in Diyala province. In response, the Pentagon has shifted tactics, up-armored vehicles - and poured billions of dollars into a little-known agency called the Joint IED Defeat Organization.
Established as a small Army cell in late in 2004, JIEDDO ("JAI-doe") has since been transformed into a full-fledged defense agency, with 358 military and civilian staffers. It is developing its own intelligence net and leveraging a wide range of technical expertise to develop efforts to defeat IEDs as "weapons of strategic influence," to use a term from one JIEDDO briefing slide.
The organization has been generously funded since its inception, to the tune of $6.3 billion, and the administration wants to give it $4.5 billion more for fiscal 2008.
But some lawmakers are wary. They say they don't see that money making much of a difference in the casualty rate, that JIEDDO doesn't clearly discuss the effectiveness of what it does, that it relies too much on technical defenses rather than strategies to stop IEDs at their sources, that it is not managing its money effectively, and that it doesn't provide timely reports to Congress.
Wrong on all counts, says retired Army Gen. Montgomery Meigs, who became JIEDDO's director in December 2005.
In a meeting with Military Times editors and reporters May 8, Meigs defended the pace and quality of his group's work in helping troops train for the IED threat, counter it and help U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan actively seek out IED networks.
JIEDDO's effectiveness, he said, can be seen in a harsh wartime calculus: While the U.S. casualty rate as a result of IEDs has remained fairly steady since 2003, insurgents now must field far more bombs to maintain that casualty rate - and increasingly expose themselves to U.S. strikes in the process.
In June 2003, insurgents detonated about 500 IEDs, Meigs said. This March, he said, there were six times as many attacks. While the exact figure is classified, that math would work out to an astonishing 3,000 IED attacks per month during the ongoing surge of forces into Iraq.
Seen in that light, a flat U.S. casualty rate from IEDs is a signal that the jammers and other technology and training JIEDDO has given U.S. forces are working; if they weren't, explosive devices would be claiming far more American lives, Meigs argued.
Attacking on 3 fronts
To combat the seemingly endless supply of cheap bombs and insurgents willing to set them off in camouflaged roadside ambushes or in moving vehicles, JIEDDO takes a three-pronged approach:
*"Defeat the device" by developing and fielding items such as jammers and route clearance devices.
*"Attack the network" through technical and human intelligence to spot IEDs.
*"Train the force" both before and during deployments in IED defeat techniques.
The details of much of the "defeat" work are classified. It includes jammers, such as the largely vehicle-mounted Warlock Duke, which is JIEDDO's single greatest expense; gear to enable route clearance; the cost of providing advice and research and development funding for the mine-resistant ambush-protected armored vehicles that are being rushed to the war.
This hardware-heavy prong has attracted most of JIEDDO's total funding - 78 percent of the $3.6 billion available in fiscal '06. In large part, that's because "it's easier to see what equipment you need to buy, and go out and buy it," Meigs explained.
But in April 2006, the Defense Science Board reported that the Pentagon's counter-IED efforts had become too focused on more technical, defensive and adaptive efforts, rather than attacking the networks underpinning the IED attacks, and suggested JIEDDO concentrate more on jammers and sensor technology.
Meigs, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, said his boss told him to "stop buying platforms."
Meigs took that to heart. Since then, "defeat the device" efforts have leveled off while "attack the network" efforts are up markedly.
The third leg of JIEDDO's mission triad is "train the force" - a wide-ranging effort at the National Training Center, the Joint Readiness Training Center and other locations," with realistic training aids. The efforts range from training soldiers "how to ask questions like a policeman does," as Meigs put it, to jammer and aerial electronic warfare training, and even to exercises that involve troops encountering actors who build mock IEDs.
May 21, 2007
Pg. 24
Now takes more bombs to get same level of casualties
By William H. McMichael
Improvised explosive devices - the weapon of choice for insurgents in Iraq - continue to have a devastating effect on U.S. troops in Iraq.
Exact IED casualty figures are hard to come by, but according to the Pentagon, "explosive devices" have killed 1,570 U.S. troops in Iraq from the start of the war through May 5 - some 57 percent of the 2,741 total deaths due to hostile action.
Several recent IED attacks in Iraq have taken an especially heavy toll. On May 6, roadside bombs killed eight U.S. soldiers, six of them in one attack on a convoy in Diyala province. In response, the Pentagon has shifted tactics, up-armored vehicles - and poured billions of dollars into a little-known agency called the Joint IED Defeat Organization.
Established as a small Army cell in late in 2004, JIEDDO ("JAI-doe") has since been transformed into a full-fledged defense agency, with 358 military and civilian staffers. It is developing its own intelligence net and leveraging a wide range of technical expertise to develop efforts to defeat IEDs as "weapons of strategic influence," to use a term from one JIEDDO briefing slide.
The organization has been generously funded since its inception, to the tune of $6.3 billion, and the administration wants to give it $4.5 billion more for fiscal 2008.
But some lawmakers are wary. They say they don't see that money making much of a difference in the casualty rate, that JIEDDO doesn't clearly discuss the effectiveness of what it does, that it relies too much on technical defenses rather than strategies to stop IEDs at their sources, that it is not managing its money effectively, and that it doesn't provide timely reports to Congress.
Wrong on all counts, says retired Army Gen. Montgomery Meigs, who became JIEDDO's director in December 2005.
In a meeting with Military Times editors and reporters May 8, Meigs defended the pace and quality of his group's work in helping troops train for the IED threat, counter it and help U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan actively seek out IED networks.
JIEDDO's effectiveness, he said, can be seen in a harsh wartime calculus: While the U.S. casualty rate as a result of IEDs has remained fairly steady since 2003, insurgents now must field far more bombs to maintain that casualty rate - and increasingly expose themselves to U.S. strikes in the process.
In June 2003, insurgents detonated about 500 IEDs, Meigs said. This March, he said, there were six times as many attacks. While the exact figure is classified, that math would work out to an astonishing 3,000 IED attacks per month during the ongoing surge of forces into Iraq.
Seen in that light, a flat U.S. casualty rate from IEDs is a signal that the jammers and other technology and training JIEDDO has given U.S. forces are working; if they weren't, explosive devices would be claiming far more American lives, Meigs argued.
Attacking on 3 fronts
To combat the seemingly endless supply of cheap bombs and insurgents willing to set them off in camouflaged roadside ambushes or in moving vehicles, JIEDDO takes a three-pronged approach:
*"Defeat the device" by developing and fielding items such as jammers and route clearance devices.
*"Attack the network" through technical and human intelligence to spot IEDs.
*"Train the force" both before and during deployments in IED defeat techniques.
The details of much of the "defeat" work are classified. It includes jammers, such as the largely vehicle-mounted Warlock Duke, which is JIEDDO's single greatest expense; gear to enable route clearance; the cost of providing advice and research and development funding for the mine-resistant ambush-protected armored vehicles that are being rushed to the war.
This hardware-heavy prong has attracted most of JIEDDO's total funding - 78 percent of the $3.6 billion available in fiscal '06. In large part, that's because "it's easier to see what equipment you need to buy, and go out and buy it," Meigs explained.
But in April 2006, the Defense Science Board reported that the Pentagon's counter-IED efforts had become too focused on more technical, defensive and adaptive efforts, rather than attacking the networks underpinning the IED attacks, and suggested JIEDDO concentrate more on jammers and sensor technology.
Meigs, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, said his boss told him to "stop buying platforms."
Meigs took that to heart. Since then, "defeat the device" efforts have leveled off while "attack the network" efforts are up markedly.
The third leg of JIEDDO's mission triad is "train the force" - a wide-ranging effort at the National Training Center, the Joint Readiness Training Center and other locations," with realistic training aids. The efforts range from training soldiers "how to ask questions like a policeman does," as Meigs put it, to jammer and aerial electronic warfare training, and even to exercises that involve troops encountering actors who build mock IEDs.