The IED War FAQ

Info compiled by Dan Simmons from Thomas E. Ricks’s book "FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" and other sources.

Question: In the early days of the IED War against American troops in Iraq, the weapon of choice for insurgents was roadside bombs. About one-third of American troops killed in 2003 (the first year of what is now seen as the U.S. occupation there) and two-thirds wounded severely enough to be evacuated from Iraq were victims of these so-called “improvised explosive devices.” During the summer of 2003, almost all of these IEDs were hardwired (attached by lines used to detonate them.) What was the U.S. military’s primary counter-tactic to these IED attacks?

Answer: See the wire, follow it back, and kill the person waiting at the other end.

Question: By the winter of 2003-2004, about half of the IED bombs were remotely controlled, triggered by car alarm transmitters, toy car controllers, cell phones, and the like. In addition, the levels of explosive had risen to include 155 mm artillery shells as well as mortar rounds and large amounts of TNT or plastic explosive. In the Sunni Triangle, the IEDs of choice were radio-controlled toy car mechanisms with their electronic innards wrapped with C-4 explosive and detonated with a blasting cap. What did Lt. Col. Steve Russell, headquartered in Tikrit, devise – and advise those who came after him to use – to avoid these radio-controlled bombs?

Answer: Mount one of the toy-car controllers on the dashboard of your Humvee and tape down the levers, detonating any such IED about a hundred meters in front of you.

Question: The insurgents would carefully choose spots for IED placement, such as traffic circles and intersections, and plant the bombs in the middle of the night. How did U.S. troops adopt a low-tech way to counter this practice?

Answer: Learn the kind of IED locations the insurgents preferred, leave behind a sniper team, and kill any Iraqi who went out into that intersection or traffic circle on foot in the middle of the night.

Question: During what some military historians are calling Second Fallujah – i.e. the second battle between Marines and insurgents in the evacuated city of Fallujah that resulted in the heaviest urban fighting in the war to date -- why did Marines use Polish snipers from the Coalition?

Answer: Rules of engagement for snipers in all branches of the U.S. military, including the Marines at Fallujah, required that a sniper’s target be carrying a weapon and show some hostile intent. Polish snipers’ rules of engagement allowed them to shoot any Iraqi man seen carrying a cell phone in that city almost emptied of civilians.

Question: Insurgents by late 2003 began leaving artillery shells and other remote-detonated explosives in the hollowed-out carcasses of dead dogs, dead donkeys, and other such carcasses that are common sights along the sides of Iraqi streets and highways. These dead animals smelled so bad and were so common that they were very difficult for American IED spotting teams to approach and investigate. How could they be countered?

Answer: Blow up every carcass from a distance.

Question: By the Battle of Second Fallujah, how had the dead-dog strategy been further adapted by the insurgents?

Answer: The Iraqi and foreign insurgents, who had flocked to Fallujah by the thousands, began booby-trapping the corpses of their own dead and even their wounded left behind.

Question: How did the Marines respond to this new tactic?

Answer: They “killed fallen Iraqis twice,” and in some cases – but not most – delayed in giving medical aid to wounded insurgents.

Question: As the insurgents watched U.S. troops become more sophisticated in dealing with IEDs, they and their civilian supporters observed that the convoys and troops would stop about two hundred meters short of the bomb. They then began planting more obvious bombs about two hundred meters in front of the actual IED killing zone to blow up the U.S. vehicles and troopers where they stopped. What could U.S. forces do after many such successful attacks?

Answer: Drive like hell. Get on the sidewalk and keep going. Drive over any civilians who get in the way.

Question: The insurgent IED bomber cells became much more sophisticated by 2004. Each cell often contained six to eight people, one of whose job it was to video-record the IED attack for propaganda, training, and recruiting purposes. Other IED team members might include the financier who paid for the operation, the emplacer, who would plant a bomb by pretending to fix a flat tire or by lowering it through a hole cut in the floor of the car, the triggerman who detonated the device, and one or two spotters. How did the military deal with this ratcheting up in insurgent IED teams’ sophistication?

Answer: They attempted to improve intelligence, but as that failed, they up-armored soft-skinned Humvees and every other vehicle they took into harm’s way so that they had a better chance of surviving the explosion.

Question: By winter of 2003, the suicide bomber in a moving vehicle became a popular IED delivery method. How did U.S. troops counter this measure?

Answer: The insurgents tended to use cheap, old cars for their suicide car bombings. U.S. troops began to look for old jalopies that sat low on their springs because of the heavy weight of munitions. Another sign was fresh tires on such an old car. “This is a one-way trip, driver wants no flats,” explained a 2004 briefing.

Question: By the winter of 2004-2005, insurgents began concealing IEDs among overhanging branches and leaves in the lush areas around Baghdad or hanging them from light poles. The purpose of this was to move the bomb blast above armored doors to direct the blast through windows while killing and maiming the U.S. soldiers manning weapons atop armored vehicles. How did American forces respond to this tactic?

Answer: By using more sophisticated jamming devices, by using heavily armored vehicles and IED dispersal teams to scout the roads and disarm or explode the bombs, and by “buttoning up” and accelerating when coming to areas with lots of overhanging branches and posts.

Question: Between 2005 and 2007, U.S. military sources alleged that Iranian commando forces that were part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard allied with President Ahmadinejad were importing into Iraq – and training the insurgents there in the use of – sophisticated remote-control detonating devices (which could defeat both the Warlock Red and Warlock Green electronic jamming devices currently in use by Coalition forces) as well as introducing advanced plasma and “heavy slug” kinetic roadside explosives.

This new type of IED was often buried within the roadbed or set alongside the road and consists of a “shaped charge” and a cone of copper creating a hollow space in front of and along the axis of the charge.

When this explosive is detonated, the copper transforms into a forceful jetstream of molten metal known as “plasma.” This plasma jet contacts a surface at a velocity of 8,000 meters per second and cuts through unprotected steel armor like the proverbial hot knife through butter. These more advanced plasma IEDs are credited with destroying a growing number of American armored vehicles, including M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley armored vehicles, Stryker APCs, and up-armored Humvees, even though these vehicles had recently been protected by various types of add-on armor.

If the plasma jet does not strike a target within a few meters, it solidifies into a high-velocity kinetic slug which is less effective against heavy armor but which is still devastating against softer targets. Both the plasma jet aspect of the Iranian weapon and the kinetic slug are effective at igniting ammunition stores within the tank or vehicle, causing secondary explosions and killing the crews in a fireball that not only burns the American troops to death but asphyxiates them by consuming all oxygen within the armored vehicle.

(It should be noted that as late as May of 2007, left-wing blogs, editorials, and newspaper columnists in Europe, the UK, and in the United States denied either the existence of these weapons in Iraq or, if they existed, any definitive proof that Iran was behind their import and use there. When the U.S. Army presented Iranian manufacturing numbers and other evidence, including interrogation notes of Iranian commandos apprehended in Iraq who admitted to training Iraqi insurgents on the use of copper-plasma IEDs, critics suggested that this was more U.S. disinformation in preparation for a Bush Administration attack on Iran.)

Assuming the copper plasma-kinetic slug IEDs are a real threat, what can Coalition forces in Iraq do to counter them?

Answer: There’s no known countermeasure for such plasma armor-piercing weapons. As for the new anti-jamming detonators introduced by Iran, the U.S. military is currently undergoing field tests on the new Joint Improvised Explosive Device Neutralizer (JIN), which uses controlled directed energy to jam sophisticated remote-controlled activators, as well as the Scorpion II Demonstration System, a transportable high-powered microwave system capable of disabling a wide variety of IED triggering devices. (It should be noted that insurgents have already shifted to using infrared laser command links in areas where American electronic jammers have been effective.)

As a response for what the U.S. military claims is a growing problem of Iranian special forces arming and training both Shiite and (surprisingly) Sunni insurgent forces in Iraq, many members of Congress, primarily Democrats, have called for negotiations with the Iranians.