IEDs have been around a long time and I won't bore anyone with another google search, but simple state I recall studying a booby trap/IED manual that was dated in the 1950s and it wasn't the first edition. Most of know that our opponent will resort to asymmetric warfare when their conventional forces are ineffective. None of what we're experiencing should be a surprise, nor should it be the major issue we're making it out to be (serious yes, but significant no).

You don't defeat IEDs, you defeat the enemy who is emplacing the IEDs. Yet we have a task force dedicated to defeating IEDs. I have mixed feelings about this, of course my humane side loves the added armor, jammers, and new vehicles being fielded, but my practical side wonders if our focus on force protection (which is what this is all about) has somehow made us more vulnerable to losing the support of the population, which in this conflict means losing. Some thoughts:

1. The U.S. norm and expectation is low casualties today. One of the biggest casualty producers in this war is IEDs, so we developed a task force designed to protect us against IEDs. This is far from unethical, but the focus on force protection over winning the war is unethical (at least in my opinion). IEDs are the biggest casualty producer based on the way we fight (or don't fight), but if we actually conducted more dismounted patrols, saturated areas with combat troops in effort to control the population (this is being done now in parts of Iraq), I think we would see the casualty producers shift, where small arms fire would surpass IEDs. If that happens do we produce a new task force to counter AK47s? Again you defeat the IEDs by defeating/neutralizing the enemy, whether through a political settlement or controlling the population. As one contributer mentioned, if you saturate a trouble with IED hunter-killer teams you make a dent in the problem, and in addition to protecting the force you actually kill the enemy, instead of just moving from point A to point B in increasingly more effective uparmored vehicles. In other words we fight harder and smarter, not just hide behind our technology.

2. Perhaps a continuation of point one, but when we invest so heavily in IED defense and make such an issue of it in the media, and we still continue to lose Soldiers to IEDs we create the impression that the enemy is defeating us. The IED attacks have very little to do with whether or not we're actually winning (I don't like this term, but it will suffice for now) or not, other than the fact that the entire world seems to be watching the conflict as though it is a cat and mouse game between the IED employers and our force protection measures, while the real issues are obscured.

3. 24 hour news services make the trivial important as we all can see with local crime cases becoming sensational national news where each witness or friend of a witness getting interviewed excessively to fill the time, and this approach transfers to war coverage also, where a tactical weapon now has strategic impact. This results in calls to further mitigate casualties giving the enemy additional freedom of maneuver. Who are we dancing with the press or the enemy? The press isn't the enemy, but our response to the press hurts us.