Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[milnews.ca]

Mods - if there's someplace better for this, feel free to nudge it.

This, from IRN media:

The Taliban in Afghanistan have built a new generation of improvised explosive devices which is not detectable, a Taliban statement has said.

The new IEDs, called "Omar", have been made by the Taliban technical experts inside Afghanistan and cost only $85 each, the statement, released on Friday, said.

According to the Taliban statement the new IEDs are not detectable by special mine-detector machines used by foreign forces based in the country.

Taliban said they have made the new remote-controlled IEDs after the US and NATO forces entered into Afghanistan special modern devices that are able to detect and neutralize ordinary IEDs made by the Taliban.

The Taliban say the new-generation IEDs have proved to be effective.

The report comes as the United States promised on Friday to provide armored vehicles, ground penetrating radar and other equipment to NATO allies to help protect their troops in Afghanistan from increasingly deadly roadside bombs ....

In the same reliability neighbourhood as IRN media, here's the Taliban's statement on that one (PDF at non-terrorist site - Scribd.com - but in Pashto).

Michael Yon, on a related track:

Am told the enemy has started using IEDs that use no metal. As explained to me by an excellent source, when you step on the bomb, it causes two liquids to mix which then explode.

[Rex Brynen]

Ahh, someone rediscovers--yet again--wooden mines/IEDs. This has been going on since about a week after someone first invented the (metal) mine detector...

[Ken White]

the Russian PMD series to the Schü to the VC models...

[Schmedlap]

The Taliban has discovered Diet Coke and Mentos. All is lost.

[Stan]

In addition to WWII's wooden mines, the use of similar so-called "Omar" IEDs by drug cartels has been in Colombia for almost 30 years !

We've got mechanical mine clearance equipment all over the world, but yet can get a few vehicles to Afghanistan ?

It's proven that these vehicles improve agriculture too - turning 25 inches of soil with each pass

[Fuchs]

The working speed of flail systems is a walking pace, the working speed of most other mechanical mineclearing systems is a slow bicycle pace.

Neither is a good convoy protection answer to under-road mines + neither provides protection against off-route mines.


These offence-defence spirals at low war intensity* won't yield any decision and thus deserve little attention. The key problem is the problem of IFF.



*: Most forms of possible combat are impossible because of an incapable enemy, after all.

[Stan]

The working speed of flail systems is a walking pace, the working speed of most other mechanical mineclearing systems is a slow bicycle pace.

Neither is a good convoy protection answer to under-road mines + neither provides protection against off-route mines.

These offence-defence spirals at low war intensity* won't yield any decision and thus deserve little attention. The key problem is the problem of IFF.

*: Most forms of possible combat are impossible because of an incapable enemy, after all.

Hey Fuchs,
Interesting your choice of the stone-age flail system but yet none of the military's heavy armor or even the latest German system. Both cover a square click in one hour. They are not designed to protect convoys (you know that already), and they do a good job of destroying anything with frequent chain replacements.

Regards, Stan

[Fuchs]

Roller, rake, dozer & flail.

The double extruder idea didn't work properly afaik and magnetic solutions don't work against mechanical mines either. Simple pushing devices (that bend feeling antennas early) are uninteresting in this context as well.

Rake and dozer don't work satisfactorily in hard ground against buried mines. Rollers rarely if ever work satisfactorily.
Flail is terribly slow.

Did I miss one?


Anyway; the point is that mineclearing equipment is a sideshow even though the enemy is extremely weak and thus limited to little else but a mine campaign due to his lack of survivability in combat.