By Charles J. Hanley
The Associated Press, 14 March 2006.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The United States is pouring billions more dollars and
fresh platoons of experts into its campaign to "defeat IEDs," the roadside
bombs President Bush describes as threat No. 1 to Iraq's future.
The American military even plans to build special, more defensible highways
here, in its frustrating standoff with the makeshift munitions - "improvised
explosive devices" - that Iraqi insurgents field by the hundreds to hobble
U.S. road movements in the 3-year-old conflict.
Out on those risky roads, and back at the Pentagon, few believe that even
the most advanced technology will eliminate the threat.
"As we've improved our armor, the enemy's improved his IEDs. They're bigger,
and with better detonating mechanisms," said Maj. Randall Simmons, whose
Georgia National Guard unit escorts convoys in western Iraq that are
regularly rocked, damaged and delayed by roadside blasts.
Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, operations chief for the anti-IED campaign, was
realistic about the challenge in a Pentagon interview. "They adapt more
quickly than we procure technology," he said of the insurgents.
Casualty charts show a growing problem.
Better armor and tactics lowered the casualty rate per IED attack last year.
But attacks almost doubled from 2004, to 10,593, meaning the U.S. death toll
from IEDs still rose. Since mid-2005, an average of about 40 Americans a
month have been killed by improvised explosives, twice the rate of the
previous 12 months, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site
that tracks casualties in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the overall U.S. death rate held steady from 2004 to 2005, making
IED fatalities comparatively more significant. Last month, for example, 36
of 55 American military personnel killed in Iraq were IED victims.
The bomb makers have the White House's attention. In a radio address on
Saturday, Bush said roadside bombs "are now the principal threat to our
troops and to the future of a free Iraq."
Bush said in a speech Monday that Iran had supplied IED components to Iraqi
groups, but U.S. officials have presented no evidence to support that, nor
did Bush explain why Shiite Muslim Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni-dominated
insurgency.
For their IEDs, Iraqi insurgents, who are believed under the direction of
former military and intelligence officers, rely on the tons of military
ordnance left over from the era of Saddam Hussein, and on store-bought
electronic and other items for ignition systems.
The Pentagon's upgraded Joint IED Defeat Organization is getting a sharply
increased $3.3 billion this year to foil the often rudimentary weapons,
which the Iraqi resistance generally fashions from artillery and mortar
rounds. The "JIEDDO" staff of explosives experts and others will almost
triple, to 365.
>From 2004 to 2006, some $6.1 billion will have been spent on the U.S.
effort - comparable, in equivalent dollars, to the cost of the Manhattan
Project installation that produced plutonium for World War II's atom bombs.
The investment has paid dividends in Iraq: in "jammers" installed on
hundreds of U.S. vehicles to block radio detonation signals; in massively
armored Buffalo vehicles whose mechanical arms disable roadside bombs.
Forty-five percent of emplaced bombs are cleared before detonation, the U.S.
command says.
In one initiative showing how seriously it takes the threat, the Defense
Department proposes spending $167 million to build new supply roads in Iraq
that bypass urban centers where convoys are exposed to IEDs.
But experts like the Air Force's Bob Sisk, an explosives-disposal specialist
whose teams are daily disarming IEDs north of Baghdad, said the most
important investment is in intelligence.
"The idea is to get the pieces of an IED to `Sexy,'" said this senior master
sergeant.
"Sexy" is CEXC, the Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell, a secretive group
at Baghdad's Camp Victory that is building a database on IED incidents, in
search of patterns and defenses.
"The initiation system" - detonators - "is always of interest," Sisk said.
The bomb makers have progressed from using washing-machine timers and
pressure switches for initiating explosions, to cell phone and walkie-talkie
signals, and even infrared beams.
The IED analysts are vitally interested in placement-concealment tactics.
The bombs can be found in roadside garbage bags or sandbags, in piles of
rocks, buried in holes, in sheep or dog carcasses. One was recently
discovered disguised as concrete street-side curbing.
Hoaxes are a peril. "The enemy's very smart," said Capt. Peter Weld, Sisk's
commander. "They plant a harmless device that soldiers find and gather
around, and then they hit them with a real device nearby."
"Shaped charges" are also proliferating - killer explosives that direct
armor-piercing projectiles into U.S. vehicles.
The Pentagon's Adamson said new ways to neutralize IEDs on the ground are
critically important. But "we'll never keep up with the enemy's agility,"
and the top priority must be "taking down the human component - the
financiers, the suppliers, the bomb makers."
For that, he said, "our goal is to get better technical and forensic data
off the ordnance" - from digital photos, measurements, explosive residue,
fingerprints, debriefings of troops on the scene.
The U.S. command claims significant success, saying it has captured or
killed 41 bomb makers since November. But soldiers still face the bombs at
seemingly the same rate.
The Georgia National Guard's Sgt. Robert Lewis couldn't help being impressed
while on duty in central Iraq.
"There's a road we called IED Alley that the ordnance disposal guys would
clear regularly," Lewis, 47, of Carrollton, Ga., said at his current post in
western Iraq. "But no sooner would they reach the end of that stretch" -
eight miles - "than the insurgents would be planting IEDs again at the
beginning."
Citation: Charles J. Hanley. "U.S. Pours Money Into Roadside Bomb Fight," The Associated Press, 14 March 2006.
Original URL: http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=1722625