Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[Rex Brynen]

Besides, why does more money go into Humanitarian Mine Action efforts in some places than into preventable disease?

Oh, I have no presumptions about the macro-rationality of donor assistance!

It does seem to me there are some aspects in which demining may have a certain "strategic" significance. Given the frequency with which transport routes, abandoned housing, economic infrastructure, etc. is mined, demining becomes essential for a range of related imperatives (refugee return, agricultural production, economic growth). Moreover, mines and UXO can be a major source of explosives, and so there is a military/counterterrorism implication here too.

None of which invalidates looking at IEDs as posing different sorts of challenges, as you propose to do.

[redbullets]

Oh, I have no presumptions about the macro-rationality of donor assistance!

It does seem to me there are some aspects in which demining may have a certain "strategic" significance. Given the frequency with which transport routes, abandoned housing, economic infrastructure, etc. is mined, demining becomes essential for a range of related imperatives (refugee return, agricultural production, economic growth). Moreover, mines and UXO can be a major source of explosives, and so there is a military/counterterrorism implication here too.

None of which invalidates looking at IEDs as posing different sorts of challenges, as you propose to do.

My organization has conducted something called Landmine Impact Surveys for several years - these efforts werre actually the original reason our team was brought together in late-1998. Our last serious one was in 13 of Iraq's 18 governorates. For the most part, the major contaminated countries with real need for these expensive, time-consuming projects have been completed or are underway. I think there's a rathional tendency now to exampine the same kind of infratructure blockages/impacts that these surveys specifically look at, and that you mention above, but cull the data from a wider variety (read: cheaper) range of alternate sources, and there are more and more tools out there that allow this.

Here is the first of the four principles of humanitarian response to IEDs that I developed, and that I think addresses your point about explosives supply:

1. In most, if not all countries where IEDs are employed, Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) on former or current battlefields are a foundational component of the IED assembly line. Humanitarian efforts to eliminate landmines, UXO and Abandoned and Hazardous Ordnance (AO/HO) should include the impacts of IEDs upon civilians when prioritizing ERW mitigation. IEDs that are “fed” by abandoned caches, depots and other ERW sources are NOT a threat distinct from currently accepted HMA parameters.

Cheers,

[Stan]

Hi Joe !

Here is the first of the four principles of humanitarian response to IEDs that I developed, and that I think addresses your point about explosives supply:

1. In most, if not all countries where IEDs are employed, Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) on former or current battlefields are a foundational component of the IED assembly line. Humanitarian efforts to eliminate landmines, UXO and Abandoned and Hazardous Ordnance (AO/HO) should include the impacts of IEDs upon civilians when prioritizing ERW mitigation. IEDs that are “fed” by abandoned caches, depots and other ERW sources are NOT a threat distinct from currently accepted HMA parameters.

Cheers,

Well put ! Oddly enough, we've known this for some time, but never seemed to get the HDO community to address and recognize the direct correlation between UXO and IEDs. Although our IED incidences have decreased over the last 10 years, I had hoped to address IEDs in my future country plans for funding considerations instead of finding injured or maimed children’s pictures

Hmmm, are you still working on the other 3 points or do you intend to feed those to us once per day

[redbullets]

Thanks, Stan. I'll e-mail the others to you - still a bit protective of them as I want to get in a good position with them to tweak the humanitarian community for having failed to address the issue.

I'm sure if we can cull the data around targets even partially, we can begin to make assessments concerning infrastructure impacts/damage in addition to the victimization trends, rates, and public health system impacts and needs. Anyway, if we can get the data in some viable form beyond the daily media hyperbole, maybe we can make something happen.

There's a very practical element to this that the Humanitarian Mine Action community should consider. Funding specifically aimed at demining/EOD is on the decline, and increasingly focus is being placed on mainstreaming (linking demining to overarching relief/development/infrasructure programs) and the holistic, all-conventional-weapons approach. That ordnance sources feed IED production, and subsequent IED use produces civlian casualties, should add some impetus toward keeping humanitarian demining/EOD capacities a bit more vibrant than might have been the future outcome.

Cheers,

[Jedburgh]

The Daily Item, 10 Jun 08: Swampscott PD to Speak to Students on Dangers of IEDs

In an effort to curb the rising number of incidents involving improvised explosive devices, the Swampscott Police Department and the Massachuessetts State Police Hazadrous Devices Unit will speak to students Wednesday at Swampscott Middle School about the dangers associated with making IEDs.

Several Middle School students have been involved in incidents involving IEDs in the last couple of years. The most recent was in May, when a student was disfigured when an IED he was making blew up.....

[Tom Odom]

The Daily Item, 10 Jun 08: Swampscott PD to Speak to Students on Dangers of IEDs

We use to make "IEDs" when I was a kid with gunpowder from dud firecrackers and other fireworks. Of course M-80s wrapped together with a single fuse were just dandy.

And my older cousins in Oklahoma were all in the Nat Guard and used to bring home hand grenade and artillery simulators as well as .30 cal blanks that were great in my 03 Springfield--much better than going bang bang when you played army.

I remember Mom coming out rather indignant when Dad was trying to get a nap one afternoon at the family homestead in east Texas, "Tommy do you have to throw those bombs while your father is trying to sleep!?!"

Tom

[selil]

In high school metal shop I made a completely accurate 1/8th scale Army Cannon based on blue prints I found from the 1870s. My instructor was none to happy when he found out that it was fully functional. In wood shop I made the cart for it. It'd shoot a tennis ball a long freaking ways. Or not very far at all if you loaded to much smokeless behind it. Estes rocket motor igniters are how we fired it off.

[Jedburgh]

I grew up in an area right next to a RR switching yard. We'd often hang out there and just slap various stuff together to see what kind of bang or flame it would make. There were some really good ones, along with a few dud experiments....

Some kids just don't have any sense, though, and go beyond the normal boyhood exuberance in doing the pipe bomb thing - and with black powder it always seems to go wrong when screwing down the metal end-caps. I have a picture somewhere of a high school kid who was doing exactly that in his garage (for a school science project - approved by the teacher!) and blew himself across the hood of dad's car. That was a few years ago - but it was only three months ago that a Mom in Oklahoma was charged with "explosives manufacturing" for buying her teenage son supplies to build pipe bombs.

[Stan]

Among my current favorites are Polish made M40s (approx. 1/4 stick of TNT equivalent) and the good old days of mixing powdered aluminum, salt peter and sugar.

Sam, sounds like a sweet canon ! Portions of my misspent youth in DC was making tennis ball canons outta real coke cans, mucho duct tape, and a little bit of Zippo fluid

Back to reality - Seems the more ghastly the posters and commercials are, the more likely children will continue to play with ordnance and explosives to their very detriment. We have a 1997 clip of an incident involving 6th graders who placed a 155 round into a campfire. Although the round detonated low order, a large portion of the projectile killed a young girl and the blast effect and debris injured seven others. One would think that such footage would suffice and preclude future incidences. Sadly, not.

I hope the current popularity of IEDs (especially in films) doesn't end up producing more idiots and casualties among our youth

[Jedburgh]

I hope the current popularity of IEDs (especially in films) doesn't end up producing more idiots and casualties among our youth

Stan, it already has, to a certain extent - no epidemic certainly (despite the concerns in Swampscot), but enough to ping stats up a bit nationwide. Combine the instigation/motivation of IEDs in films, in the news and the availability of directions (often dangerously inaccurate) on the 'net and off they go.

Of course, for some it is merely another form of self-accelerated natural selection.

[selil]

Back to reality - Seems the more ghastly the posters and commercials are, the more likely children will continue to play with ordnance and explosives to their very detriment.

It doesn't have to be ordinance. Between my Junior and Senior year of high school I did boot camp and Armor School at good ol' Fort Knox, Ky (National Guard split option training program). In the course of my three months there I watched a guy get run over by a tank on the ramp, another guy squished between two tanks, and another guy rip off three fingers when a turret traversed unexpectedly. All things we had seen grisly nasty examples of, and all things we had been told billions upon billions of times not to do. In fact the guy directing the tanks that got squished was one of the training cadre.

Months of high quality training can not overcome moments of idiocy a public relations campaign has no hopes.

[J Wolfsberger]

You guys had way more fun. I got shut down when I was trying to make nitroglycerin in high school chem lab. (Hell, I was only going to make a few ounces ... )

[Adam L]

I agree, the PR campaign isn't going to do anything. These kids need something a little more graphic and realistic. Unfortunately, the only ideas I can come up with for this would probably end in law suits.

If you do not mind foul language and want a laugh, I would suggest you see what Denis Leary has to say about this. (Click Here) (I know this is a little of topic, but I think it's along the same lines.)

Adam L

[Stan]

Stan, it already has, to a certain extent - no epidemic certainly (despite the concerns in Swampscot), but enough to ping stats up a bit nationwide. Combine the instigation/motivation of IEDs in films, in the news and the availability of directions (often dangerously inaccurate) on the 'net and off they go.

Ted, had to wait til morning to log onto LEO/EOD. Jeez, the nationwide stats make Swamscot look safe (with only 3 filed incidences). It appears that post 9/11 legislative changes have turned some of our childhood experiments into jail time. Glad I got most of it out of my system and now get paid to do it

Of course, for some it is merely another form of self-accelerated natural selection.

Adam's work safe video (except for 'virgin ears' Ken) fits this to a tee

... In the course of my three months there I watched a guy get run over by a tank on the ramp, another guy squished between two tanks, and another guy rip off three fingers when a turret traversed unexpectedly.

Glad I studied and later taught at Edgewood Area APG, Sam

Regards, Stan

[Jedburgh]

....It appears that post 9/11 legislative changes have turned some of our childhood experiments into jail time. Glad I got most of it out of my system and now get paid to do it

You ain't kiddin'. Making homemade explosives in a RR switching yard? Would probably end up in Gitmo now.

[Tom Odom]

You ain't kiddin'. Making homemade explosives in a RR switching yard? Would probably end up in Gitmo now.

I was watching TCM the other evening while having dinner and I caught the end of one movie and the beginning of another...

Both starred Robert Taylor and both were about knights. One was a very distorted Ivanhoe and the other was Knights of the Round Table. They came out in the early 50s and by the late 50s were showing on our then 3 channel TV sets in black and white.

Those 2 movies (and others of the same genre) inspired neighbohood jousting matches on bicycles with pointed lances and apple crate shields. Sword fights with the same shields and one by two swords suitablly pointed. Our aluminum foil and cardboard "helmets" did little to soften a blow that came over the top of the shield. Apple crate lids slowed but did not stop a lance touch when 2 kids were hurtling toward each other at top speeds.

Nobody got seriously hurt. Go figure.

Tom

[wm]

I was watching TCM the other evening while having dinner and I caught the end of one movie and the beginning of another...

Both starred Robert Taylor and both were about knights. One was a very distorted Ivanhoe and the other was Knights of the Round Table. They came out in the early 50s and by the late 50s were showing on our then 3 channel TV sets in black and white.

Those 2 movies (and others of the same genre) inspired neighbohood jousting matches on bicycles with pointed lances and apple crate shields. Sword fights with the same shields and one by two swords suitablly pointed. Our aluminum foil and cardboard "helmets" did little to soften a blow that came over the top of the shield. Apple crate lids slowed but did not stop a lance touch when 2 kids were hurtling toward each other at top speeds.

Nobody got seriously hurt. Go figure.

Tom

Akin to that was the "Posse chasing the Outlaws" game, using bikes. I still don't know why no bones were broken as the good guys swooped down and, while rolling along at top speed, leaped from one bike to the other to pull the outlaw off his "horse" (a la the Lone Ranger and a host of other defenders of frontier justice). We were never good enough ropers to be successful at lassoing anyone off his bike though.

[Tom Odom]

Akin to that was the "Posse chasing the Outlaws" game, using bikes. I still don't know why no bones were broken as the good guys swooped down and, while rolling along at top speed, leaped from one bike to the other to pull the outlaw off his "horse" (a la the Lone Ranger and a host of other defenders of frontier justice). We were never good enough ropers to be successful at lassoing anyone off his bike though.

Yep we did that one too. We also had a small rail head behind my grandad's house where the highway department stored gravel and asphalt in 50 foot mounds that were 30-40 yards long. They were absolutely fantastic for downhill bicycle racing with superb crashes. No helmets. No pads. Just skinned knees, elbows, and faces if you did the headfirst pitch over. Later we added ramps at the bottom. Just got better and better...

[wm]

One of our craziest efforts along that line was a simulation of the rocket sled sequence that opened that TV show. We used several truck tire inner tubes tied between two trees to launch us on our bikes at high speed into the very large sandpile that a housing contractor had left behind. Great fun, and the sand caused your bike chain to make some really weird noises--better than the motorcycle sounds of baseball cards, clothes-pinned on the chain stays and fork, flapping in the spokes.

[Jedburgh]

All of this plays back into something that many of us have mentioned in relation to a number of topics on the board. The current environment in which kids are growing up is way overregulated - safety restrictions intended to protect the dumbest, parents looked at askance by the general population if they encourage or allow children to do anything perceived as dangerous, and low-level altercations between kids treated as a major threat to life and security. Sure, extreme sports are popular - but only an extreme minority are actually involved - the majority watch them sitting on their behinds or get involved vicariously through computer gaming.

This is what ends up being our recruiting pool - young'uns who are risk averse, are unused to any sort of physical hardship, let alone having ever been involved in a fight or even a really heated argument. I live in what used to be a rural heartland, and is still huntin' and fishin' heaven for many. But the number of kids that are involved is steadily shrinking. And don't even get me started on the way school sports are run these days at Middle/Junior/High School levels.

Sure, there are plenty of exceptions to the Nancy-boy stereotype I just painted - but from where I sit, that's exactly what they are - exceptions.

Along these general lines, and for your entertainment: Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids