IEDs: the home-made bombs that changed modern war

[davidbfpo]

Improvised Explosive Devices

This thread was prompted by an IISS Strategic Comment, longer than most and I have used their title as the thread's title.

It opens with:

Sometimes called ‘the artillery of the twenty-first century’, these home-made bombs have been responsible for the majority (nearly 70%) of foreign military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the same way that most battlefield casualties in the twentieth century were inflicted by artillery.

And ends with:

Countering IEDs will remain a core requirement for land forces. Any force – whether state or irregular – seeking to combat Western forces will have observed the advantages that IED have given to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. As IED are often similar in capability and employment to conventional land mines, armies may merge counter-IED efforts with broader counter-mine capabilities. It will be important for them to institutionalise approaches to countering IEDs, keeping knowledge and expertise current even in the absence of major operations.

Link:http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...ed-modern-war/

I know SWC has discussed some of the issues around countering IEDs and SWJ has had articles too, most notably on the MRAP acquisition process. Oddly there are very few threads easy to identify as focussed on IEDs and all these will be closed - with a caption pointing to this main thread (Yes, the dreaded Moderator at work):

1) Wood box IEDS (re-titled The role of IEDs: Taliban interview):http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=11322

2) Oldest Vehicle borne IED? RFI:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=6538

These are both mainly historical and reflect members knowledge.

3) Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, a single post with 3.5k views: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=6335

4) EFPs; the new AK-47?: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=5414

5) Military Claims Victory with V-shaped Truck (more the response to IEDs):http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2460
On 27th August 2012 merged into a new thread on MRAP.

6) MRAPs Can't Stop Newest Weapon (ditto above):http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3055
On 27th August 2012 merged into a new thread on MRAP

6) Fighting Roadside Bombs (started in 2005, ended 2008): http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=1055

7) Bombs in Iraq Getting More Sophisticated (mainly Iraq 2005-2007, a closed thread):http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...read.php?t=131

8) Ambush, IEDs and COIN: The French Experience (not merged):http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=5585

There are a number of relevant posts (found 27th August): The role of IEDs: Taliban interview; Vertical envelopment and the IED How To Stop IEDs.

[Fuchs]

There's nothing new or modern about mine warfare on land. We've had that for a couple centuries, see 17th century mineur troops (demolitions engineers).

The "modern" thing about it all is rather that the rebels are so vastly inferior and so much in danger in most other forms of warfare than mine warfare that their theoretically wide repertoire has almost entirely been reduced to minelaying, thuggery and occasional harassing fires.

Earlier capability asymmetries had a different face, but looked similarly. An Amazon tribe's poison arrow ambush, Germanic small warband raids in woodland were essentially the same.
Very little of OPFOR's repertoire still worked that the remaining active repertoire (usually a very, very careful action) was perceived way out of proportion.


It's as complaining that you're getting itched badly by the stiff stitching ends of a double amputee. A double amputee whom you've amputated and who happened to be the best boxer in his town before he faced you.

Does this make stiff stitching the important face of modern martial arts?
Not really.

It rather shows that humans adapt to almost everything, get used to almost everything. Even a little itch is a major issue if there's no other irritation.


I bet you'd instantly forget about the itching once you get into a brawl with a really good kickboxer who breaks your arms.



OK, this was a bit more graphic, but I basically wrote the same thing here before.

[davidbfpo]

Fuchs,

I agree that the use of mines or IEDs is not 'new' in warfare. As a civilian I think there is something in the military-bureaucratic world that needs to label the re-appearance of an 'old' method as 'new' and so gain funding for example.

On a quick scan of the linked threads it was interesting to see so many previous historical examples given, such as the local use of bicycle IEDs in a WW2 IRA bombing campaign.

I am not aware of any comparisons made of the damage incurred in previous campaigns and more contemporary ones, so will agree with the IISS author the proportion of casualties has changed.

[Johannes U]

I want to restart this thread by requoting from davidpfbo and the IISS article:

Countering IEDs will remain a core requirement for land forces. Any force – whether state or irregular – seeking to combat Western forces will have observed the advantages that IED have given to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the Austrian Armed Forces we have for different reasons neglected the issue of C-IED battle drills for a long time.
For other reasons we now start with incorporationg them into our training.

I have the following questions to the Council:
How do you evaluate the IED-threat to the leading elements of an attacking InfBn when conducting a secured road march towards the line of depature during an attack?
Do you use the same battle drills (5/25, 4 C's, Isolation, VP or however you call them?
Who decides what is a danger and what not?
How far in advance can you plan those battle drills?
How do you deal with the expected delay when planing an offensive operation?

I hope that my inquiries are clear and understandable.

I do have some ideas and I want to share them with you as soon as I have formulated them into simpler sentences .

Thanks in advance

[Stan]

Guy Fawkes, AKA the mad bomber, is considered to be the very first to create an IED in 1605. Imagine had he done away with the entire British Parliament.... What would the UK be now ?

The IED has been around for centuries but yet only in the last 15 years have we spent so much time concerned with it.

Those that deal with these generally don't talk about it and those that end up dead don't have much to say.

Fact is, we only spend time on any issue when people start to die. Our Mine Risk Education Program begins to dwindle because there are insufficient deaths. How ironic !

Johannes,
The TTPs are adhoc and each scenario differs from the last. No cookie cutter to quickly adapt to. Who ultimately decides that the AO is dangerous depends on who's in charge and their priorities.

EOD elements are not offensive in nature... rather responsive. Delays are part of the job and they come often enough with little to no advance warning. The UNMAS plans on little more than the fact that a battle has taken place and there will be UXO.

Regards, Stan

[ganulv]

Stan,

Do you agree with the quote below from a post C.J. Chivers put up on his blog last summer?

[L]ooked at coldly the Syrian army, which began the war as the biggest man in the bar, has been on a bloody and agonizing one-direction ride. You can make a social argument here, which should serve as a warning for other crackdown artists or champions of conventional military units’ roles in the irregular wars or our age: This is the modern-day outcome of using blunt force against a potentially large, determined and angry enemy on its own turf with a bulky and a doctrinally incoherent force that must make things up as it goes. That argument will probably stand. But then come the particulars that explain how an army, which set out pitted against an essentially unarmed foe, will lose. This is where the I.E.D. fits in. Once the armed opposition mastered the I.E.D. and spiked with bombs much of the very ground that any military seeking to control Syria must cover, and Syria’s army lacked a deep bench of well-trained explosive ordnance disposal teams and the suites of electronic and defensive equipment for its vehicles to survive, then the end was written. Because the Syrian army is ####ed. And its troop must know it.

[Fuchs]

This IED hyping is BS.
The Syrian army did not win quickly (or so far at all) because motivation (morale) is extremely important.

The army obviously lacked men who actually wanted to fight the rebels, and did/does so even in leadership positions.


It's astonishing how simplistic superficialities such as the hardware fashions can still cloud people's view on the real basics of warfare.

[Firn]

I think 3 basic trends are at work:

1) We humans can look back at a long evolution in which trapping played a considerable role. It needs little capital input, a generally relative small amount of labour and profits greatly from intelligence and knowledge. Overall it could provide much vital return on the investment.

2) The technological progress and economic development have vastly increased the potency , availability and variability of the toolkit.

3) Small, protracted wars, especially with a vastly stronger side provide a set of circumstances which lets the weaker side gravitate towards the `trapping` approach.

There are of course lots of other variables like topography etc involved but the basic trends should pretty much look like that.

[Stan]

Originally Posted by ganulv

Stan,

Do you agree with the quote below from a post C.J. Chivers put up on his blog last summer?

Hey Matt,
Yes and no. I lean more towards comments from Fuchs and Firn. C.J. makes some valid points regarding the capabilities of the Syrian Army as well as their equipment, but the IED in Syria is not the IEDs in Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan. The overall IED-related stats account for less than 5% of Syrian army deaths (although I should point out that our information is dated as the UN all but pulled out).

The background in C.J.'s picture vs the pictures from The Atlantic indicate the Syrian Army is well on the way to total destruction. Morale among the Syrian troops as Fuchs points out must be at an all time low. That and the failure rate of Syrian and Russian ordnance, means a lot of UXO to utilize and clean up. That worries me more than the potential IED threat.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by davidbfpo

Fuchs,

I agree that the use of mines or IEDs is not 'new' in warfare. As a civilian I think there is something in the military-bureaucratic world that needs to label the re-appearance of an 'old' method as 'new' and so gain funding for example.

On a quick scan of the linked threads it was interesting to see so many previous historical examples given, such as the local use of bicycle IEDs in a WW2 IRA bombing campaign.

I am not aware of any comparisons made of the damage incurred in previous campaigns and more contemporary ones, so will agree with the IISS author the proportion of casualties has changed.

It is disapointing, but there is a lot of truth in this assertion, especially when it comes to IEDs, but this is only part of the issue. Another key aspect is the media's focus and hype about IEDs, which the military in turn must dance to due to Congressional pressure (our want to be warfighters) to get after the IED problem.

The good news is that there have been some signifcant gains in the research and development world to help address the IED threat, and tactics in some cases have appropriately evolved. The bad news is despite our attack the network as one line of effort against IEDs, we have lost a lot by focusing on the trees instead of the forest. It is amazing how many man hours and analytical focus will get diverted to a relatively insignificant tactical capability of the enemy.

Get off the roads, control territory (can't do that from fire bases, you have to be out and about constantly), and defeat the adversary. We never would have defeated any adversary in history if we focused on defeating their rifles, their artillery, their planes, etc. We would have simply degraded their ability to fight until they adapted, unless we could have quickly pushed them to their culmination point (that isn't happening with most insurgencies). In some respects, as many have said, very little about warfare has changed over history, but our response to it has, often inappropriately.

[Bob's World]

Every schoolboy knows the story of how the British Regulars stuck to the road as the marched back to Boston following the battles of Lexington and Concord, and were torn apart by Rebel snipers along the way.

Now we are the road-bound regulars. Not so funny when the shoe is on the other foot. Weaker forces will always seek some asymmetric advantage, it is incumbent upon the regular to ignore doctrine and adapt. In Korea the Chinese ran the ridges while US forces clung to the roads. Now it is IEDs. If one makes themself a target, the enemy will use you as one.

[Johannes U]

OK gents, thanks so far for the feed-back.
Now some clarifications:
I am a firm believer in the idea, that only an offensive mindset brings you further toward success. Insofar i totally agree with Fuchs, Bill and Bob in your Statements, especially this one:

We never would have defeated any adversary in history if we focused on defeating their rifles, their artillery, their planes, etc.

I do not want to fight the IED, I want to fight its "user", its "financier", ... simply said: THE ENEMY.

Still, one fact remains: during the 1st world war, some armies still attacked an entrenched enemy using upright marching blocks of infantry ... and were cut down by the "new" machine gun. (When was the MG developed? ...)
My point is, that if your doctrine, tactics and battle drills are founded on a battlefield 60 years ago, they might not function any more on a modern battlefield (or at least without fault). So you have to adapt. Otherwise you will loose. And it's better to adapt before you fight than during or afterwards.

OK, so much for clarification. Now some ideas from my side:
When your forces conduct an offensive first-entry mission, the enemy might try to block your advance by using IEDs at choke points, culverts, bridges ...
If your advance guard conducts C-IED battle drills at each of those points, you might not get anywhere.
Thus your recce elements should cover, search and maybe observe most of those points in advance. But since those elements also have other missions and are (at least in Austria) in short supply, they will not be able to cover all.
My solution for this problem is the following:

• responsibility for "clearing" those points is divided among the different recce elements on the different levels
• the advance guard conducts C-IED drills only when its lead elements (the first vehicle) recognize an IED in front of it which cannot be bypassed or when ordered
• if you still are hit by an IED (maybe in combination with a complex attack) you use the usual counter-ambush drills

Do you see the solution along the same lines?

One more thing:
In 2010 I attended a NATO-sponsored C-IED Train The Trainer Course in Croatia.
I realized that if you don't include those C-IED drills into your other battle drills, your mindset will become defensive and thus you begin to see the IED as the enemy.

[Fuchs]

Mines in small groups instead of used en masse are really only good for harassment and a little attrition.

You cannot defend anything with such means, but your can demoralise and it takes resolute leaders and some urgency to avoid a major mine-driven impact on operations.

Such mines aren't even serious obstacles, much less defended ones.


As an Austrian I would have a close look at a very, very different kind of mines; proper engineer demolition work for avalanches, collapsing bridges, closed-off tunnels and bursting dams. The isolated conspicuous object next to the road would be relatively insignificant and inefficient in your terrain.
Of course Austrians won't fight at home any time soon, but once the EU is under attack they would be expected to be among the few mountain warfare experts available to the EU.

(I'm the guy who thinks almost only about wars between great powers as scenarios because those are the problem; small wars are despicable games by politicians.)