Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

An excerpt from a forthcoming book, All the Ways We Kill and Die, by Brian Castner tells the story of the hunt for the bomb-makers of Iraq and Afghanistan:http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the...metrics-at-war

It ends with a telling point:

Because that’s the funny thing about using biometrics. The only way to find one person is to find everyone.

From the author's website:

This is the story of an American family at war, and the men and women who fight this new technology-heavy and intelligence-based conflict. I interviewed intel analysts, biometrics engineers, drone pilots, special operations aircrew, amputees who lost their legs, and the contractors hired to finish the job. They are all hunting a man known as al-Muhandis, The Engineer, the brains behind the devices that have killed so many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[davidbfpo]

From WoTR and from a different angle:http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/tra...-than-answers/

The author's bio:

Sarah Soliman led U.S. Special Operations Command’s first Identity Operations team in Afghanistan, as chronicled in the book “All the Ways We Kill and Die.” She is an Emerging Technology Trends Project Associate at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and is pursuing her doctorate through King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. She can be reached @BiometricsNerd.

[davidbfpo]

The previous two posts were copied here from the Biometrics thread, they refer to this book subject of a review of Brian Castner's new book All The Ways We Kill and Die

See:http://taskandpurpose.com/ied-rocked...-battlefield/?

I am slightly puzzled this thread has had no updates since 2010, even if it was closed approx. a year ago. Anyway it is open for now!

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to WoTR for this article by a veteran EOD officer, who seeks to review the challenges posed by IED use and the counter-response:https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/ho...nd-innovation/

[Azor]

Hat tip to WoTR for this article by a veteran EOD officer, who seeks to review the challenges posed by IED use and the counter-response:https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/ho...nd-innovation/

Just read the article David, thanks for posting.

My response would be that the lessons of Northern Ireland were overlooked. The Catholic population there resented the trappings of occupation and the seeming imposition of martial law, which benefited the adversary Protestant population and its paramilitaries. The sight of armored cars and helicopters would infuriate Catholics and draw the attention of the PIRA which sought to attrite British forces. The British were successful when they used a special forces/intelligence combination. Instead of a visibly heavy presence, plainclothes military and police intelligence officers would spy on the PIRA, whose members would find themselves suddenly arrested or ambushed.

Returning to Afghanistan, it would have been better for Coalition forces to traverse mined areas in helicopters, to barrack themselves securely and counter Taliban subversion with a network of plainclothes intelligence officers and special forces operators, backed by conventional reinforcements if necessary. Moreover, the Pashtuns were marginalized to a degree, with other ethnic and sectarian groups comprising the majority or disproportionately large shares of the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army.

[davidbfpo]

A NYT report 'How ISIS Produced Its Cruel Arsenal on an Industrial Scale' is a must read and sits better here then elsewhere IMHO -as this technology will migrate. The content is very dependent on international NGO input.
Link:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/10/w...sis-bombs.html