Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[Rob Thornton]

it allows us to consider how IEDs (and other like conditions) effect all 3 levels of war. It also allows us to consider that the enemy must also overcome chaos and friction, often suffering directly and indirectly from actions occurring elsewhere as well as creating conditions which afford us opportunities provided we can recognize their significance and capitalize on them. This is not to say that this was a coordinated effort where task and purpose nested nicely with operational objectives and strategic ends - few planned things ever work out so well because the future is unpredictable and the attraction of linearizing things after they happen is strong; however the effort to make the linkages and take full advantage of them should not be understated - it is the art of recognizing potential, arranging resources and exploiting possibilities. It provides a model that military CDRs and planners along with policy makers and their advisers should consider when contemplating complex problems.

There is another way to stop IEDs - used successfully in OIF III: make the cost of emplacing them prohibitively high. I'll err on the side of OPSEC and omit the city and nitty-gritty details, but the basic gist of it is that we flooded the city with small teams whose sole purpose in life was to observe, report, and kill anyone emplacing an IED.

Overwatches/Ambushes along with patrolling and a QRF built on an understanding of the enemy through good reporting, debriefs and small unit AARs are good tactics - the enemy is more vulnerable here and for him to have an effect he must come to where he will find his enemy. This hits the enemy at the tactical level, but can also disrupt his operational goals - an example would be his attempting to increase OPTEMPO in an outlying city in order to get us to shift forces out of the capital or to try and operationally fix forces required in the capital.

The going rate for digging in an IED went from $25 to over $500 because the imminent threat of death resulting from IED emplacement become so apparent to the populace.

Depending on the flexibility of funding ascribed to a group or cell - raising the price of IED emplacement or the activity which supports it (dropping of supplies, recon, digging a hole, etc.) drains operational funds which might go to other activities such as material procurement, paying of government officials and informants, recruiting new members, training, movement, housing and food, etc. If this is a small group it may force them into criminal activity or some other activity which de-legitmizes them, slows their OPTEMPO, causes cell friction, or causes them to get sloppy and killed for example. If it is a part of a larger group it may drain funds from elsewhere disrupting those operations, force communications which allow us to understand and target them, and sew discord which exacerbates existing problems. Combined with other Lines of Effort which offer choices to those who supported IED networks - could be becoming an informant, could be a new line of work - the cost/value equation takes on a new perspective. For the politically committed this may be something to be waited out, but their network requires a certain amount of environmental facilitation - as that dries up, its harder for them to operate.

Now, this is not a strategy to defeat our enemies, but it was an approach that stopped IEDs and enabled us to get the IA and IP into the city with their unarmored vehicles with a greatly diminished threat of them incurring mass casualties.

Enabling the Host Nation security forces to operate in an environment where the enemy has been deprived of a tactic and weapon which afforded him an advantage has multiple benefits - it increases the amount of forces available to secure the populace and deny the enemy physical and moral freedom of movement, maximizes the natural advantages obtained by being a security force that is representative of the culture it operates in, and its often the first physical representation of the government which can lead to establishing legitimacy. Once the HN SecFor has established itself, US/CF assets/resources/units can be redistributed or redeployed -This is an exponential increase - and is a solid linkage to the operational and strategic levels of war through tactical operations.

The necessary condition was not for the US forces and Anbar tribes to stop fighting one another. The necessary condition was to convince the Anbar tribes to drive al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the province.

This is changing the nature of the political objectives/conversation by some of the belligerents through recognition of shift in conditions. In the captured letter between AQ leadership and AQIZ leadership great concern was expressed about the wanton carnage and tactics employed by AQIZ against Iraqis - it was recognized by AQ as jeopardizing the political objectives they were after - in fact the letter recommended that AQ expend more effort in its political operations then its military ones. There have been documented horrors as well as violations of familial and tribal honors which may have occurred partly as a result of impatience, frustration and stresses as AQIZ's vision of the battlefield failed to be realized - partly through tactical and operation successes by US, CF and ISF - which were partly enabled through freedom of movement - which means mitigating the effects of IEDs along MSRs and ASRs. This probably had some effect on how the Anbar Sheiks viewed the evolution of their political objectives from one where they were more aligned with the interests of AQIZ, to one where they were more aligned with us (and the HN).

All of these things combined create and compound operational problems for insurgents that flow in both directions, gain momentum at various points and can create new opportunities for us and the HN to be exploited.

Danger - this is not to say that the lines are clearly drawn - I don't think we can do that given the infinite variables that may have been introduced - but I do believe them related enough to use for considering the complex social conditions that occur in war and which IEDs represent.

Even though events unfolded as they did, there was no guarantee that they would -its more like we assembled the various pieces with some common frame of reference (and we're not done yet) - so policies which might create the conditions cannot guarantee the desired outcome - just because we'd like to imagine it as a linear series of events between the start point and the end point - doesn't make it that way (its more akin to guessing how the cards will land and which cards are under the others in 52 pick up then lining up dominoes). What we can do I think to maximize our chances of coming relatively close to the desired strategic outcome is attune ourselves to changes and opportunities and have the resources available to make the most of them while remaining flexible and adaptive at the tactical and operational levels.

We are not done in Iraq, not done in Afghanistan and the odds are that in some places they are designing and/or cranking out and caching Insurgent capabilities such IEDs that are far better then the ones we've seen so far, and training cadre and training documents that allow them to mix types of warfare and transition from different types of operations and retain the initiative. These UW capabilities will probably not be used solely for Internal defense but as in the past, used to foment insurgency, terrify and destabilize, possibly combined and coordinated with conventional GPF to achieve broader regional political objectives.

Best, Rob