The Left of Boom series in the Post on IEDs has been terrific. If you want to know more about the weapon that’s killed the most US soldiers and how we’re responding it’s a must read.
A few key points:
- The number of IEDs have been doubling and redoubling, but we’ve been able to keep U.S. casualties resulting from IEDs roughly in check.
- Due to a lot of R&D, training our people in Electronic Warfare, and bringing Navy’s experts into the field, we’ve managed to substantially reduce the percent of IEDs triggered by radio control or cell phones.
- The amount of money you need to pay someone to hide a bomb has steadily dropped from the initial $300 suggesting that even with more bombs than ever being hidden, the supply of would-be bombers outstrips demand.
- They covered most any solution I’d thought, except perhaps for using explosives or projectile weapons (rather than advanced energy weapons) to counter the force of explosions. My Finnish officemate tells me that some ships use this technique, but they have the advantage of much greater distances a missile and the ship versus the IED and a land vehicle.
If you want to see a quick summary of each part and a couple of related links, check out the PCR blog.
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