U.S. Forces Clearing Half Of All Combat Area IEDs Before Detonation

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Inside the Pentagon
March 22, 2007
Pg. 5


VIRGINIA BEACH, VA -- U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding and clearing about half of all improvised explosive devices planted by insurgents, according to an official with the Pentagon organization charged with countering the use of such roadside and vehicle-carried bombs.
“We’re finding about half of the IEDs before detonation,” Army Col. Barry Shoop, science adviser to the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), said at the Naval Expeditionary Forces Symposium here last week.
The Arlington, VA-based organization was created last year to help coordinate and foster the development of counter-IED capabilities, and to do so faster than enemy operatives can change their procedures and hardware. JIEDDO took over work previously performed by a joint task force.
In a Jan. 18, 2006, memo, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England established the organization to “lead, advocate and coordinate all department actions in support of combatant commanders’ and their respective joint task forces’ efforts to defeat [IEDs] as weapons of strategic influence.”
In the fourth year of war in Iraq, IEDs remain the main cause of U.S. troop casualties. More than 3,000 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Presently, “less than 10 percent” of all IEDs are causing all casualties, Shoop said. They remain the “No. 1 threat to troops” and the top weapon used by insurgents because “they are lethal and they’re effective, they’re abundant and they’re cheap,” he added.
The Defense Department defines IEDs as devices that incorporate “destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic or incendiary chemicals” to “destroy, incapacitate, harass or distract,” according to a Pentagon Web site.
Originally created as an Army task force in 2003, the organization’s establishment is a signal that the Defense Department views IEDs as permanent threats that will continue to be used in future conflicts around the world, Shoop said.
“IEDs are currently the weapon of choice for insurgents and terrorists and we know that they will be the weapon of choice of the future,” Shoop said. JIEDDO is “going to be around for quite a while,” he added.
JIEDDO officials are observing and “watching” the use and proliferation of IEDs in countries like Indonesia and Colombia, he said.
“There is a world presence for these devices,” Shoop said.
Science and technology investment in the organization is focused on various ways of detecting and neutralizing IED threats, the science adviser said.
The organization is interested in partnering with industry and academia to develop technologies that can detect IED-related electronic signals, Shoop said. It also is interested in placing technology on robots to enable “standoff” detonation, he added.
Shoop views JIEDDO as an “investment bank for new IED defeat technologies,” but the organization needs faster solutions to keep up with the “extremely short” period of time in which simple explosive devices can be turned into more sophisticated IEDs, such as “explosively formed penetrators.”
Insurgents and terrorists using IEDs leverage the “consumer electronics market,” Shoop said.
Earlier this year, the Bush administration asserted that Iran was supporting insurgents using explosively formed penetrators -- which can easily penetrate light- and medium-armored vehicles -- by smuggling parts of the device into Iraq.
One counter-IED method, dubbed “attack the network,” is geared toward determining and isolating the “physical attributes” of the terrorist networks that develop and use the bombs, Shoop said.
Much of the organization’s focus in this area is on “forensic science,” he said.
JIEDDO officials are exploring how to use biometrics -- like fingerprinting and cornea recognition -- to identify individuals that finance, build and place IEDs, according to Shoop.
The organization has hired retired law enforcement officials to see how policing techniques can be incorporated into IED detection and training for deploying forces, he said.
“Soldiers and Marines [who] are patrolling through downtown Baghdad are much more like cops on the beat,” he added.
The wounded-in-action ratio compared to killed-in-action ratio in Iraq is 9-to-1, compared to an average of 3-to-1 in the Vietnam War, Korean conflict and World War II, Shoop said.
-- Rati Bishnoi
 
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