Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[cj.kirkpatrick]

This is an insightful article, and highlight's an American obsession with the "silver bullet" of the IED fight. I think that's b/c it is intellectually easy to find technological solutions to problems. Time and again, we look for the better vehicle, the better EW solution, the better ISR asset to protect routes and Soldiers who travel on those routes.

While it is critical to secure our Soldiers and our lines of communication with all the above force protection strategies, we cannot lose focus on the actual solution to the problem. That solution is found off the very roads we commit so much energy to seizing and securing. To maintain momentum and an offensive mindset, we have to consider security of LOCs and Soldiers as access to people, not an end-state. Constant presence and relationships among people prevents IED emplacement, not the latest and greatest magical tech tool.

[redbullets]

Thanks for posting this. I'm finishing up a piece about IEDs that looks at both the fact that they're here to stay, the genie having been released from the bottle long ago, and then going into a discussion of how the humanitarian community should respond in areas where IEDs pose a much larger threat to civilian populations than landmines/UXO.

Funny how sexy "new" terms like IED suddenly get everyone oriented toward a new Manhattan project, despite all historical evidence to the contrary. I'm using incidents in my piece that include the attempted assassination of Sultan Abdul Hamid II by car bomb (1905, first recorded such incident), the horse-drawn wagon bomb at the JP Morgan Bank (1920), Bath MIchigan (1927), as well as BATF's own (2000-2003) web site to illustrate that IEDs are nothing new, given we have between 200 and 500 successfully detonated IEDs in the US per anum.

Cheers,

[Rex Brynen]

I'm using incidents in my piece that include the attempted assassination of Sultan Abdul Hamid II by car bomb (1905, first recorded such incident)

What about the 24 December 1800 attempted assassination of Napoleon? Surely wagon-bombs count!

The First Consul Napoleon was required to be present at a performance in the Paris Grande Opera. When Napoleon's carriage rushed along Saint Nicolas Street, an explosion resounded. Napoleon did not suffer; his carriage was driving too quickly, but the power of the explosion was such that almost 50 people were killed or wounded and 46 neighboring houses were damaged. The source was a barrel of gunpowder laced with shrapnel that was hidden in a harnessed wagon at the roadside.

"Napoleonic Wars, Espionage During," Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security (2004)

[redbullets]

Thanks, I'll use this one too. I guess I'm categorizing based on actual automobiles and wagons in what I'm writing, but an attempted hit on another major international historical figure is great fodder for what I'm working on. A bit of shock value is certainly the goal, mainly to try and let readers know that IEDs have been around since gun powder, and that the US has not been an exception.

Another section I'm including is on the Rains brothers during the American Civil War. In the interest of full disclosure, I've referred to writings about BG Gabriel and COL George Rains by Mike Wright and Peggy Robbins in presentations about landmines, but since Gabriel took friction fuses developed by George and put them on artilery shells, I reckon they will work as another early example of IEDs in the US. Gabriel even managed to kill a 'possum with one while chasing Seminoles in Florida in the 1840's.

Cheers,

[Wagram]

Having spoken to many veterans of the war in Algeria, read articles as well as countless books written in french on the subject, I have to say I found the article too light on research and too heavy on assumptions.

In Algeria, IEDs aren't mentioned as a major threat in books written by veterans of that periods. The trail running along the "Morice line" (a barbed wire control zone separating Algeria from Tunisia) and patrolled day and night by protected vehicles (M3 half-tracks, Scout Cars, M8 Greyhounds and the like) was often mined by the ALN but IEDs as such were a rarity. The main threat was encountering an ALN katiba in transit from Tunisia before it had "bomb shelled" and while it still had all its fire power (including the dreaded MG-42 MGs that were far superior to what most french units used then, either the FM 24/29 or even the BAR LMGs, the AAT-52 LMG arriving only late in the conflict).

A good friend of mine was a FFL Pn Cdr at the time; he survived dozens of contacts in the Djebel but he never once mentioned to me IEDs.

The ALN units did not want to be surprized in the open planting complicated devices; mines were used but they were heavy and had to be manpacked all the way from Tunisia; their use was thus more widespread close to the Morice Line.