–General Peter Pace
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
November 2005
GENERAL PETER PACE issued that statement last November in response to an inquiry about the Pentagon’s efforts to combat the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq. What General Pace did not say was that the number of IED attacks had roughly doubled from 2004 to 2005 and thus better tactics, techniques, and procedures had failed to reduce the overall number of fatalities stemming from the IED threat.
There have been approximately 823 coalition fatalities directly attributed to IEDs. This number represents less than a third of overall casualties, but anecdotal evidence indicates that, among the troops on the ground, no tactic employed by the Iraqi insurgency is as dreaded. In the last month alone, 36 of 55 U.S. fatalities were the direct result of an IED.
If anything, the IED toll may be understated, since the military does not include in it the number of soldiers and Marines killed by small arms fire in the aftermath of an explosion (otherwise known as “complex attacks”). These attacks occur in the open at a time and place of the enemy’s choosing–they wait for the bomb disposal team to arrive and then open fire in an IED ambush.
Two weeks ago, I was contacted by an individual uniquely qualified to comment on both the threat posed by the IED and the military’s response. This individual is a staff-level military officer who focused on the IED threat while serving in Iraq during most of 2005. He has been on patrols with U.S. units in the high-threat IED areas around Iraq and has also worked in the Pentagon.
This officer described to me a military that has been ineffective in confronting the IED threat for three reasons: (1) overdependence on technology-based solutions; (2) a stifling culture of bureaucracy; and (3) a failure to compile accurate information on each IED attack.
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
According to Newsweek, in the spring of 2004, a year after the invasion, General John Abizaid wrote to Secretary Rumsfeld and described IEDs as “the number one killer of American troops” in theater. He requested a “Manhattan Project-like effort” to develop new technologies in order to defeat the menace. For the most part, that’s exactly what the military, and the taxpayers, received. The Pentagon spent roughly $6.1 billion between 2004 and 2006 on the effort. The Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), a Pentagon task force, has a budget of $3.3 billion for this year alone. Though this investment has led to the development of some impressive counter-IED technologies, it has not translated into success in decreasing IED casualties.
While the military has had some success in deploying up-armored humvees to better protect troops on Iraqi roads, insurgents have likewise adapted their tactics. The Washington Post reported late last year that insurgents now have access to Iranian TNT, which is 7 times more powerful than the TNT otherwise available in Iraq. With further assistance from Iran, these explosives are being fashioned into shaped-charges capable of focusing a blast so as to greatly amplify its destructive potential. As Marine Col. Bob Chase told the Post, “We got better armor, they started getting better ordnance.”
Lt. General Russel Honore described the threat of the shaped charge to CNN: “When the energy is concentrated in a small area, it projects out that metal, and that metal caused–can be effective against almost any armor, to include the M1 tank.” This is not a hypothetical–M1 tanks in Iraq have been disabled and destroyed by these devices.
While most IEDs result in negligible damage to passing armored vehicles, the military source claims that insurgents now routinely bury IEDs directly underneath the road. By pouring gasoline on the asphalt and lighting it, insurgents are then able to dig a hole in the softened road and bury their explosive charges in what appears to passing troops as a pothole. Most vehicles have little or no armor protecting the undercarriage, making them highly vulnerable to blasts from below. The most deadly IED attack to date saw insurgents detonate three anti-tank rounds directly under an amphibious assault vehicle, killing 14 Marines.
Besides employing more armor, the military has set out upon an expensive and ambitious effort to develop “jammers” capable of interfering with the remote detonation of IEDs. Details about these devices are classified, but it seems likely that even the most effective jammers will only maintain their usefulness for a limited period of time before the insurgents adapt. Nonetheless, two months ago the military awarded General Dynamics Corp a $289 million contract to develop new jamming technology.
CULTURE AND BUREAUCRACY
Despite the well-funded IED “Manhattan Project,” it is highly unlikely that the military will soon develop a technology that pushes the insurgency to abandon their primary weapon. But there are other ways to neutralize the threat.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon drew up a map that delineated boundaries for coalition forces. These boundaries separated the territory a unit “owned” from that of another. Frequently these boundaries were major highways or thoroughfares–which have become the most frequent locations of IED attacks. Because units are under strict orders to remain within the confines of their designated area, soldiers on patrol often turn around several hundred meters short of that boundary to assure they don’t encroach on another unit’s area of operations.
If adjacent units follow this common practice, an unpatrolled corridor several hundred meters wide may overlay a stretch of road on which Americans troops frequently travel. My source told me of two “sister” units whose officers had, without clearance from their command, shifted their shared boundary several kilometers in order to make their own patrols less predictable to local insurgents. One day, one of the units was engaged by enemy small arms fire while in what was technically the other unit’s area. During the exchange, a civilian was killed and the fact that the unit responsible was outside of its proscribed territory led to serious repercussions–bringing the experiment to an end. This innovative, grass-roots approach was not palatable to the risk-averse military command.
Of course, the military has always been slow to incorporate lessons learned. In Iraq, operations are run by an officer corps that came of age in the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s. Bosnia was essentially a peacekeeping operation, and the military’s objective was to make clear that there was a price to be paid for breaking the peace. The “presence patrol,” in which soldiers in humvees and armored vehicles would patrol an area to make their presence felt, was an effective tactic in that situation. Each faction was reminded by these patrols that, were they to attack their enemy, Americans troops could respond quickly and forcefully.
In Iraq we are at war with an insurgency. Yet the military, with some exceptions, has continued to rely on the presence patrol. The presence patrol brings troops out onto the streets in predictable formations and at predictable times, making them easy marks for IEDs.
ACCURATE REPORTING
Fortunately, the insurgency can be predictable, too. It is not unusual for the same stretch of road to see repeated IED attacks. The insurgency also tends to replicate IED attacks that have been successful. Their methods and tactics only adapt and evolve once coalition forces mount an adequate response. Unfortunately, a lack of accurate forensic reporting on IED attacks, coupled with an inadequate system for storing and analyzing what data there are, has proven to be a major hindrance to defeating the IED threat.
The coalition maintains a database of IED attacks, but it seems insufficient for the task at hand. For example, the current database does not track the type of vehicles that were in the movement that was attacked, how many vehicles there were, or whether they were on patrol or part of a convoy. It does not track whether casualties were the result of a single IED or a subsequent IED targeting troops responding to the initial blast–a tactic frequently employed by the insurgents. Additional information, such as how many personnel were in the targeted vehicle and what part of the vehicle was targeted (right, left, front, underside, or roof) is critical, but also isn’t tracked.
Furthermore, the coalition has no official standard for IED reporting. A unit reporting an attack may take a grid reading from their GPS device and relay it, along with a few pertinent details, to their operations center. The operations center will forward that information to a higher HQ, and so on, until the information is entered into the database of record. The location reported may be several hundred meters from the site of the actual blast. Other units, from different organizations within the coalition, may respond as well, reporting the location of the attack as they have taken it from their GPS device, which may be a hundred meters or more in the other direction. Each report will be issued at the time the responding unit arrives, which may be anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours after the initial blast. The result is that the coalition database may have multiple records of the same incident, each showing a different location and a different time for what was, in fact, a single event.
TOP-DOWN SOLUTIONS
In a perfect Army, new ideas and innovative solutions would filter up from the ranks while high-tech gadgets would be passed down to the troops from the Pentagon. In reality, commanders will probably have to stop looking to the Pentagon and the JIEDDO for a silver-bullet that may not materialize for some time. Instead commanders could look to their subordinates for new, offensive strategies for defeating the IED by killing or capturing the insurgents who build and deploy them.
Commanders currently employ unconventional units in the hunt for high-value targets, such as Zarqawi, while conventional units focus on transitioning to the Iraqi Army. These two missions are, correctly, considered high priorities. But the IED is the greatest source of U.S. casualties, and when it has been addressed with force, as it was in Mosul, Americans have met with some success.
Michael Yon wrote extensively about the success of operation Lancer Fury, which he describes as “surge operation.” It was a “sort of a crocodile hunt, where our people do things to make the crocodiles come out, trying to flush them into predictable directions, or make them take certain actions. And when they do, we nail them. The combat portion of the Surge amounted to a sophisticated ‘area ambush’ that would unfold over the period of about one week.”
Lancer Fury was drawn up at the command level, but Major General M.G. Sanchez didn’t conjure the plan up out of the thin air; he built it based on input from his ground commanders.
By integrating the Iraqi Army into IED defeat operations, the military can fulfill its primary mission as well as help the Iraqi Army become more capable against IEDs, a threat that they will continue to face well after the U.S. presence in Iraq has been reduced.
THE IED IS ONLY A TACTICAL WEAPON, but it is also the only weapon that produces significant U.S. casualties. And because these casualties are the primary factor in eroding American public support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, this tactical weapon is capable of having a major strategic impact. The IED is capable of defeating the U.S. mission in Iraq if not checked by an effective tactical response.
A more offensive mindset, and an eye towards technologies that would facilitate an offensive response, may be the key to seizing the initiative and taking the war to the insurgents. Lancer Fury demonstrated just how effective the U.S. military can be when given a specific objective. Commanders should hold ground units accountable for reducing IED attacks and for securing Iraq’s major arteries, and they must provide them with the resources to achieve that mission. If they do, there is reason to be optimistic that the IED threat can be neutralized.
Michael Goldfarb is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.
